Guild Wars 2

Ree is alive! There’s not much to this interview, just some minor clarifications if that, but lookie lookie an interview with Ree Soesbee exists.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/lore-interview-with-ree-soesbee/

That was an interesting interview for all its brevity.

We can certainly speculate on what will happen if only one Elder Dragon is left, but nobody knows for sure

This does seem to be a direction they want to lead us in. Perhaps leading to a super powered final Dragon

The Pact has been weakened by the events in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns, but it still exists

Personally I was sad to see this. The Pact feels harmful to the story, making the orders lose much of their flavour and uniqueness. A united front I can understand, but the Orders working separately would be so much more fun and really give depth and variety to story arcs. Something so desperately needed right now after the scale of problems in the current story

The magic used to create Tequatl is no longer being controlled by Zhaitan, but it still exists within Tequatl

We guessed this, but nice to (finally!!!) have official confirmation

A lot of people use greatswords—these aren’t foreshadowing, nor are they hints toward the reaper specialization. Sorry!

I suspected as much. It also shows they weren’t as early with HoT planning as originally some people suspected. I have no issue with this being the case though.

Whilst it was hardly a revealing interview, it was nice to hear from Ree after such a long absence (seemingly). Would approve of more regular Q&A lore sessions. Maybe quarterly?

Is this the first time we heard from Ree since Sea of Sorrows was pusblished in 2013? Certainly feels like it. I hope there is a good reason for her absence, like writing another novel maybe?

That interview was short but sweet and did address some interesting topics. Anatoli, Regina and Stephane had already revealed that this interview was coming in an earlier twitch stream chat, so it’s nice that we finally got to read the translation from the French source and hear from Ree again.

It’s good to hear that the Pact won’t be swept aside that easily narratively speaking as that would be selling that fighting force short. Hopefully LW Season 3 or beyond explore the aftermath of events of HoT, the PC’s role in the Pact hierarchy as well as the problems of funding, racism, rebuilding etc. considering everything that happened to the Pact in the jungle.

I do like how Ree’s answer subtly equates Tequatl’s “evolution” post Zhaitan death to the evolution of Slothasor in Salvation Pass post HoT storyline as far as haywire magic goes as both beings have gone through a transformation of sorts albeit in Slothasor’s case it’s been a lot more disturbing. It’s interesting that magic, when released, appears to mutate either already magically powerful beings or the more mundane creatures who happen to be near great places of power. This allows for potential future subplots where we’ll face not only pretenders to the throne of a slain Elder Dragon (e.g. if Glint’s baby has to face competitors from the most powerful of Mordremoth’s surviving champions who should’ve also received as big a magical power boost from what happened at the end of HoT story) but also other beings (not necessarily related to Elder Dragons or their minions at all) who have been affected by magic being released into the world in a metaphorical tidal wave. Even the players have had their share of this development as the arrival of elite specializations shows how the released magic and communing with/channeling places of power has made our professions more powerful.

I’m glad to see the tengu issue being brought up; although it appears that the adorable avians are now a lot more open minded to wider interaction with the other races, they still have a few hurdles to go through before the higher-ranked tengu will become more open to forming deeper alliances. This will likely become an ongoing subplot in the background similar to Evon Gnashblade’s and the Consortium’s shenanigans with the Captain’s Council in LA among other things.

Would’ve liked more, given how long it’s been since we had a lore Q&A, but there’s a couple of nice things in there. That was a surprisingly dense amount of new information on the tengu for such a short paragraph.

More interesting to me, though, is the phrasing of the Tequatl answer. There’s been plenty of theories bouncing around, but most of them shared the common thread of Tequatl in particularly growing to fill Zhaitan’s role- succeeding to the throne, if you will. The wording here, though, sounds more like that throne is breaking up into a lot of individual pieces, with each of Zhaitan’s ‘creations’ having the possibility of developing individually going forward. It makes me wonder, assuming that Tequatl was on track to becoming an ED, if other of Zhaitan’s champions could do so at the same time. If each dragon has two spheres, could they be replaced by seperate entities for each? Does there necessarily need to be only one dragon per given sphere, or could we conceivably have multiple, simultaneous Elder Undead Dragons in the future?

Only line that was really of interest was the bit about Tequatl. Suspected for a while but good for confirmation.

The tengu bit sounded like a throwaway but hey, at least they created a lore excuse for no playable tengu yet.

Kind of a shame they didn’t tackle any of the annoyances of the HoT plots.

BuddhaKeks.4857:

Is this the first time we heard from Ree since Sea of Sorrows was pusblished in 2013? Certainly feels like it. I hope there is a good reason for her absence, like writing another novel maybe?

There was an interview shortly after SoS’s release, but other than that yeah pretty much.

Aaron Ansari.1604:

It makes me wonder, assuming that Tequatl was on track to becoming an ED, if other of Zhaitan’s champions could do so at the same time. If each dragon has two spheres, could they be replaced by seperate entities for each? Does there necessarily need to be only one dragon per given sphere, or could we conceivably have multiple, simultaneous Elder Undead Dragons in the future?

I’ve always wanted to treat the minor updates to the Orrian undead and the temple priests to be a case of this (magic spreading mostly evenly across his stronger minions), even though there was no overt lore regarding it unlike Tequatl. So it sounds like my old theory may actually come to pass.

Regarding multiple “Elder Undead Dragons” – in theory, it would be possible, but I don’t think they’d be considered “Elder” at that point, just as Glint wasn’t despite how powerful and old she was.

I am kinda intrigued by the idea of the leftover minions fighting amongst each other for the ED energy, but not in GW2, as their pacing does not allow for these big stories, where we would be introduced to several low ranking powerhouses, trying to compete with each other.

It would be an interesting concept, though, as someone has to prove to be strong enough to wield it.

It’s great that we got confirmation that ED energy does work like normal energy and that it really is just redistributed through the world and its catalysts.

It is also interesting to hear, that rituals or magic that has been cast by EDs will not just stop functioning, but will continue to feed of the ambivalent ED energy, even after the caster has been dealt with.

This would explain why we were not able to clean Orr and why Tequattle is still around and stronger.
Though It would also mean that we should get an Orr revamp at some point, with some harder encounters throughout the map and the pact trying to clean it.
It just makes sense naratively and would create some new and exciting endgame content, that doesn’t disturb the PS storyline (since it’s instanced and the mechanics of the map are no real hindrance anymore).

Regarding the pact.
The pact is fine. Don’t hate the pact.
It is the writers and the pacings fault, that we are not experience enough order adventures.

I bet if they had the reccources to do so, the whole Order stuff would be greatly enhanced with things people we asking for a long time. Something like Order missions, ranks, etc.

Also, the Orders are still present in the story. In LS1 with Scarlet it wasn’t the pact that investigated everything. It was the Orders. A OoW agent infiltrated the Molten Alliance. The Priory was conducting research at the Tower of Nightmares and the Vigil was protecting and sheltering the people of Lions Arch.

The Pact was only reintruduced in the middle of LS2. Every encounter before was not under the pacts Banner. (Even though it was heavily Priory based. Priory was moving magical objects and the Priory is the place we went for knowledge)

GW2 is more than the Orders and I don’t think focusing on them in the main storyline is the way to go, as it wouldn’t make much sense. They compete with other races and organizations (Lions Guard, Seraphs, Legions, etc. ).

They need focus beyond the story. They need a seperate developement.

Randulf.7614:

The Pact has been weakened by the events in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns, but it still exists

Personally I was sad to see this. The Pact feels harmful to the story, making the orders lose much of their flavour and uniqueness. A united front I can understand, but the Orders working separately would be so much more fun and really give depth and variety to story arcs. Something so desperately needed right now after the scale of problems in the current story

You do know that the Pact doesn’t erase the orders?

It’s merely a joint leadership and deployment force. Note even in HoT, each order was doing their own things, in their own manner. Priory were actively researching the Exalted ruins, OoW were scouting the depths and setting up stuff for a push. Vigil was securing Verdant Brink and setting up bases.

I’ve never seen the Pact make the orders lose their ‘flavor’, as the Pact is simply the three orders combining their abilities, resources, and manpower into a united force. It’s leagues over what it was, where the orders would bicker over tiny stuff instead of working together, which was far more harmful both in a lore sense, and a storytelling sense.

“So this order is more military, armies based, and that one is researched based, yet both are dedicated to stopping the elder dragons.”

“Yes”

“Then why the hell are they fighting each other (Verbally, at most) instead of actively working together?”

“Erm…”

That’s been pretty much my thinking. First, the orders do have their own seperate identities still, they just happen to have formed an alliance. Second, with the Pact being an alliance of the three orders (and others), actually destroying the Pact would require destroying at least two of the orders or creating such a rift between them that they dissolve the alliance.

The events of HoT have probably drastically decreased the strength of the Pact, but as long as the orders still exist and still have a formal arrangement to work together on common goals, there will still be a Pact.

draxynnic.3719:

That’s been pretty much my thinking. First, the orders do have their own seperate identities still, they just happen to have formed an alliance. Second, with the Pact being an alliance of the three orders (and others), actually destroying the Pact would require destroying at least two of the orders or creating such a rift between them that they dissolve the alliance.

The events of HoT have probably drastically decreased the strength of the Pact, but as long as the orders still exist and still have a formal arrangement to work together on common goals, there will still be a Pact.

At the core, the Pact simply is the joint operation command for the three orders. Hell, such a rift would be very weird/hard to pull off considering how the whole PS was getting the orders to stop bickering (as quoted in my last post lol), and actually understand the strengths and weaknesses of the different groups, and their approaches.

So, the joint operation deployment area of the orders has a vastly weakened manpower, and the bulk of their airships are destroyed. As far as we know, most of the leadership elements of the Pact survived, but the PC commander and Laranthir were among the highest ranking operatives on the field and combat-able.

I, for one, welcome the resurgence of the Pact. It would make Guild Wars 2 an actual war story again, instead of the soap opera it has become of late.