Guild Wars 2

Rognik.2579:

Obsidian.1328:

And since Utopia “evolved” into GW2, and EotN inherited much of Utopia, it follows that EotN was the prelude and intro to GW2.

As such, since things like the Eternal Alchemy, the Pale Tree, and the Elder Dragons themselves(which are all a part of EotN) are diametrically opposed to having “gods” as the masters of magic in Tyria, then it also follows that the decision to downgrade the Six was a fundamental part of any post-Nightfall narrative scenario.

Herein lies the fallacy. Utopia was not initially planned to have multiple playable races, and even if it involved interacting with another race, that didn’t mean the gods were going to be downgraded. Once EotN was released, though, the gods were definitely getting shoved into the closet. All I’m saying is that your cause and effect assumptions were off.

I never said Utopia was to have new player races, it wasn’t. All I said was that there’d likely be new npc races with a fourth installment…like there were with the 2nd and 3rd. Here’s one author’s view of it:

“Although the PC Gamer articles heavily implies that the plans for Utopia were scrapped and the initial plan for GW2 were started at the same time, there is a possibility that this is not the case, and Utopia, not Eye of the North was intended to be a bridge to GW2. Indeed, it is known that multiple races were intended to be introduced in Utopia, such as the Sidhe (which later became the concept for the Sylvari).”

Introduced race does not mean playable race. Whether or not Utopia or EotN was intended to be the bridge to GW2 is largely irrelevant, as they both used a lot of the same ideas. What’s important is that the ending of Nightfall allowed them to proceed with EotN(heavily influenced by Utopia) in terms of introducing a completely new concept of how magic works in Tyria. Without that particular discussion with Lyssa’s Muse in the Gate of Madness mission, EotN wouldn’t make much sense at all:

Kormir: “Gods, we beseech you. Hear our prayers.”
<player name>: “We have come where living men should not be. We have fought armies, crossed wastelands and conquered demons.”
<player name>: “Now we are in the heart of Torment. We must destroy Abaddon before he destroys the world. But we cannot battle him alone.”
Lyssa’s Muse: “You are not alone. The gods are always watching.”
Kormir: “Watching? We need your help. We are only mortals, and we challenge a god.”
Lyssa’s Muse: “There was a time when the gods walked the earth. Every thought and achievement was a gift of the gods.”
Lyssa’s Muse: “But now you must realize that our gifts are within you. Dwayna lives in your compassion, Balthazar in your strength.”
Lyssa’s Muse: “Melandru dwells in your harmony, Grenth in your justice.”
Lyssa’s Muse: “And in your inspiration, Lyssa is there.”
Lyssa’s Muse: “The divinity is within you. And so, we give you our blessing. That should suffice for the task ahead.”
Lyssa’s Muse: “And to you, Kormir, a most special gift.”
Lyssa’s Muse: “This is your world, now. This is your decision. You must make the choice that only a mortal could make.”
Kormir: “Our decision? They leave us some words of encouragement and expect us to fight a god?”
<player name>: “The gods said we have a choice. A choice that only a mortal could make.”
Kormir: “Yes. Yes, there is a choice. We can end this. We don’t have to be driven by gods and their avatars. Let us go.”

That last line by Kormir says it all, curtain call for the Six. Do you really think the author decided to write that for no reason? That he/she just thought it would be a really cool ending? No way.

Races were introduced with Factions (Wardens, Naga, Kappa, Saltspray Dragons) and in Nightfall (harpies, torment demons, Margonites). This did not downgrade the Six Gods at all.

That dialogue with Lyssa’s Muse was to show that only a mortal could take a god’s place as a new god. This was the “choice only a mortal could make” – to sacrifice their being to create a new god out of the old god and old mortal.

It’s got nothing to do with writing the gods out. I mean, just look at Kormir’s final words:

If you have need of me, come to the Chantry of Secrets and kneel before my statue. I will always listen.

https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Avatar_of_Kormir

That’s not a line of writing out the gods forever. If that was their plan, they wouldn’t have involved them in Eye of the North.

Furthermore, what little we know of Utopia seemed to continue the plot of Menzies and Dhuum (particularly this concept art which seems to be the shadow army marching), before they went the direction of GW2.

I never said the races downgrades the Six, not sure where you get that.

You’re missing the subtlety of Lyssa’s words. Yes, the mortal decision was ultimately Kormir assuming Abaddon’s mantle…that’s not the point. The point is Lyssa’s argument that humanity doesn’t need the gods anymore. Kormir agrees in her last line there. Then, after she becomes a god in the final mission, “The gods spoke the truth. It is your world. Use it wisely.” She is reiterating the same idea of divine in-accountability…i.e. they won’t really matter any more.

One tiny line in a side quest in EotN? Really? Riddle me this then: if ANet had no intentions of “downgrading” the gods for GW2 in EotN, where are all of the statues that are all over the map in every preceding campaign? Did they get torn down? Merged with resurrection shrines? Church of Dwayna forget to pay their utility bill? The only possible scenario I could think of for why that is, is that somehow only the humans worshiped the gods and paid homage to them. Fat chance proving that since every sentient being on the planet supposedly used “divine” magic equally.

“What little we know of Utopia seemed to continue the plot of Menzies and Dhuum”
^— Lol, what? Golems came from Utopia. Asuran architecture came from Utopia. Sylvari came from Utopia. Heck, even Chronomancers came from Utopia. You’re cherry-picking one picture out of 10 there. Someone look at these and tell me that doesn’t scream Asuran-Sylvari love-child. You’re not trying very hard, Konig. :-/

Obsidian.1328:

One tiny line in a side quest in EotN? Really? Riddle me this then: if ANet had no intentions of “downgrading” the gods for GW2 in EotN, where are all of the statues that are all over the map in every preceding campaign? Did they get torn down? Merged with resurrection shrines? Church of Dwayna forget to pay their utility bill? The only possible scenario I could think of for why that is, is that somehow only the humans worshiped the gods and paid homage to them. Fat chance proving that since every sentient being on the planet supposedly used “divine” magic equally.

A scant few of them still remain in the world. Most of the Temple of the Ages is underwater in… I want to say Queensdale, in the swamp area. There’s the statue of Balthazar in the Plains of Ashford, which the grawl have turned into Badazar. There’s a Grenth statue over in Lornar’s Pass, tucked away in a remote corner. There’s also the two statues from Serenity Temple in the middle of the Brand. So I’m going to say that any statue that isn’t there today was indeed torn down, either by progress or destroyed by natural disaster.

Obsidian.1328:

One tiny line in a side quest in EotN? Really? Riddle me this then: if ANet had no intentions of “downgrading” the gods for GW2 in EotN, where are all of the statues that are all over the map in every preceding campaign? Did they get torn down? Merged with resurrection shrines? Church of Dwayna forget to pay their utility bill?

Where are all the statues across any of continental Tyria? They were keeping with the theme of Prophecies in not having a statue of a god at every resurrection shrine, but rather having them in various spots throughout. In all of Prophecies, there are only six statues of Melandru and Dwayna, five to Balthazar and Lyssa, and four to Grenth – as opposed to the dozens to each in Factions and Nightfall (Note: this discounts the Hall of Ascension and Hall of Heroes which have numerous statues of each god). And Prophecies is the largest game by far.

Furthermore, Eye of the North mostly dealt in places where humanity was not, so it makes perfect sense for there to be few to no statues of the gods. In the places where humanity were not common such as the Ring of Fire and Crystal Desert, you’ll find a whopping zero statues to the gods. Most Prophecies statues are in Ascalon and Kryta (7 out of 26 are not in Kryta or Ascalon – and four of those seven are in former Druid territory so even that is still decently human territory, the other three are in dwarven territory which had an alliance with humans at the time and for centuries prior).

So this isn’t odd in the least. And they are not all over in every preceding campaign.

Obsidian.1328:

The only possible scenario I could think of for why that is, is that somehow only the humans worshiped the gods and paid homage to them. Fat chance proving that since every sentient being on the planet supposedly used “divine” magic equally.

Yes, it was mainly only the humans who worshipped the gods, even in GW1. Even in Prophecies. Because the other sapient races we knew all had their own faiths and gods – dwarves had the Great Dwarf and Great Forge, tengu had the Sky Above the Sky, centaurs had their trees and earth stuff, charr are pretty obvious. Only some dwarves, potentially naga, Forgotten, and if Elonian legends are right, harpies are really hinted to have followed the Five Gods prior to Eye of the North.

We outright saw and were told that various other sapient races had completely different faiths. So the “fat chance” was indeed the situation from day one.

Excellent! Then only humans could have erected and cared for the statues? You would agree to that then? I’ll come back to that bit later.

You didn’t respond to my Lyssa or Utopia argument, no comment on those?

If only humans worshiped the gods, then why was the dwarf Ural Highstone a follower of Dwayna in that link you provided? Maybe he thought she was hot like Malchor or something. I guess since you used the adjective “mainly” you can squeak by it huh. Speaking of, why did Dwayna kill him and take his soul?? Odd thing to do for a goddess of life and mercy… At any rate, my point was that all sentient races used divine magic equally. “Mainly” every single creature in GW1 used the exact same spells that humans did, even the Mursaat. So it’s either one of three things:
1)it’s a simple game-play mechanic and not “lore”
2)every race really did use divine magic equally, or
3)chalk it up to that oh so favorite GW2 plot device: human bias.

Which one is it?

Using the same spells/skills means absolutely nothing. How the magic is controlled has nothing to do with the gods or who created magic or whatever your argument on that front is. None of the Prophesies skills mentions any of the gods by name, so it’s possible they all came from a different angle. Plus, the signet capture allowed the copying of other skills for the PC to use, so some of the skills could theoretically be from other sources of magic completely unrelated to the gods.

Obsidian.1328:

Excellent! Then only humans could have erected and cared for the statues? You would agree to that then? I’ll come back to that bit later.

You didn’t respond to my Lyssa or Utopia argument, no comment on those?

If only humans worshiped the gods, then why was the dwarf Ural Highstone a follower of Dwayna in that link you provided? Maybe he thought she was hot like Malchor or something. I guess since you used the adjective “mainly” you can squeak by it huh. Speaking of, why did Dwayna kill him and take his soul?? Odd thing to do for a goddess of life and mercy… At any rate, my point was that all sentient races used divine magic equally. “Mainly” every single creature in GW1 used the exact same spells that humans did, even the Mursaat. So it’s either one of three things:
1)it’s a simple game-play mechanic and not “lore”
2)every race really did use divine magic equally, or
3)chalk it up to that oh so favorite GW2 plot device: human bias.

Which one is it?

Mate, Konig said dwarves were known to worship the Five. You can’t just pick out part of his statement to attack him on and pretend you didn’t see the rest. And Dwayna didn’t kill Ural- that was Marln. Dwayna’s Avatar only showed up to claim the dead dwarf’s soul.

But, yes, I’d chalk the use of skills like Dwayna’s Kiss by a charr (sorry, Rognik, but there were a few) up to mechanics. The same way we don’t need to believe that margonites worshipped Grenth, or that trolls carried invisible axes. Or, for that matter, that every charr prophet had the exact same set of spells, and looked identical to one another, down to precise height and the length of their horns. I find it pretty simple to wrap my head around the fact that not everything we see in gameplay is founded in lore.

But, if you prefer to hold on to your invisible axes, then yes, the argument would pretty clearly be that the gods didn’t have control over ‘divine’ magic. We knew from the beginning that the charr worshiped the titans, after all, says so right in the manual, but they had monks using spells with the healing prayers attribute- are you arguing that the original GW1 writers meant for them to pray to the Five as well? What about the White Mantle? Or do you mean to say that worshiping the titans and the mursaat could access ‘divine’ magic as well, and that it wasn’t linked solely to the gods?

Aaron said everything I would have said, so I got nothing to add to the main point.

I didn’t comment about Lyssa’s words because it is clearly a subjective matter of opinion. I do not see that as writing out the gods – after all, the gods haven’t been involved in the world of Tyria for over 1,000 years prior. All that phrase says to me is the exact same thing as the Prophecies manual does:

https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/History_of_Tyria

Then the stones were dropped, one by one, into the volcano off the southern shore of the Kingdom of Kryta, and the gods left this world forever, confident that they had balanced out their gift and circumvented greed.

The world was already belonging to mortals. The gods were done with their manipulations and alterations of the world. It was not theirs to play around with. Add in what we learn in Nightfall and you get the addendum: Because when they don’t agree, they kitten kitten up royally (wiped out civilization, turned a sea into a desert and a verdant coast into a toxic wasteland).

And in regards to “what came from Utopia”:

That’s remnants of Utopia that was repurposed for Eye of the North and Guild Wars 2. I specifically talked about THE PLOT of Utopia, none of what you said refer to. So I didn’t respond because what you said had absolutely nothing to do with what I said. In order:

• The golems used by asura is only taken from Utopia in the most bare generic concept. The golems of Utopia look NOTHING like asuran golems.
• The architecture had no known origins to players, maybe even designers, just designs. Reutilizing that is not an a part of plot.
• Sylvari look nothing like the Sidhe, and probably have no similarity in shared origins. They’ve told us how the destroyers were originally pig demons called Tennaks.
• GW2 Chronomancers do not really “come from Utopia” but were merely an inspiration for (no more ‘coming from’ than the Lazarus of the bible being inspiration for Lazarus the Dire) – the never implemented Utopia, the lore of which is fully unknown except what could be gleamed by their appearance and a single non-‘chronomancer’ titled artwork tells us only that they were cyborg humans and… dealt with gods.

These are not the plot and story of Utopia. These are aesthetical elements that were rehashed and redesigned entirely. They hold zero bearing to the current form. And again what little we knew of the story and plot of Utopia, rather than aesthetical designs of animetronic constructs and structures… points to gods.