Guild Wars 2

Orr is poised for being a big story point, it has been ignored despite being so important. Zhaitan has been dead for a long time, long enough for lion’s arch to be rebuilt several times. Orr has room enough for an entire expansion’s worth of content.

With the Orr remake(expansion) we could accomplish multiple things:

1)Respect the the personal story ending.
Orr has been cleansed for a long time, and the only thing we have to show for it is a buffed Tequatyl. This is a very story-rich location but has been sorely ignored.

2)Keeping Orr/Zhaitan relevant.
As of right now, Zhaitan’s only contribution to the story is being dead. Elder Dragons were described to us as forces of nature. Even in death, Elder Dragons are large and magical enough to alter their environment through presence alone.

The Priory also has Zhaitan’s tail; surely they could learn something about the anatomy of Elder Dragons and what makes them different from any common drake other than magic.

3)Playable Risen.
Dragon corruption is cleanse-able, and all MMO players like playable races. If we have reason to go back to Orr (which we do) then it would make perfect sense that with the cleansing of Orr Zhaitan’s hold on the Risen will gradually fade, making them easier to cleanse if not cleanse them itself.

Now I didn’t play GW1 much, but I know there are plenty of characters from GW1 that came back as risen, and some of them retained some knowledge and slight willpower. I couldn’t pull out any names, but it is very possible to have a willful Risen come out and lead others into independence. With this new independence the Risen rebuild Arah into their own racial city, like the other races.

Risen and Sylvari might become good friends as the Sylvari would know and sympathize about overcoming your Dragon’s corruption. Naturally Humans and Char would hate the Risen, and Asura would be fascinated. This leaves room for plenty of interesting racial conflict.

Playable Risen is every bit as story-correct as playable Tengu. Along with the Tengu though, the personal story would not make much sense as it is with one of these races. My suggestion for this issue is to just make these races locked behind finishing the Personal Story on another character, making them skip the personal story. This could become standard even for any additional races.

Player-Risen do not need a big personal story of their own as a simple history lesson on the Personal Story would be all you need. From there-on they would behave like any other player race in the world. If playable Risen was expansion content, I would already have money set aside.

Side Note: Zombie Ranger Pets

4)Preparation for the trip to the Crystal Desert.
One of the many great stories Orr could tell would be the start of our journey to the Crystal Desert through a nice chunk of unexplored land to the east of Arah. The Forgotten would have a nice chance to be in this story, especially if you play a Risen or Sylvari, learning more about what dragon corruption actually is/means.

This would also lead us into fighting the Crystal Dragon himself, Kralkatorik. My goal is to hopefully get the ball rolling for what I see to be a very interesting expansion-worthy story/content.
I could go on and on more than I already have, needless to say I would love this.

Wouldn’t a cleansed Risen fall over dead? The thing that makes them move around is the dragon energy.

Donari.5237:

Wouldn’t a cleansed Risen fall over dead? The thing that makes them move around is the dragon energy.

Look to the Arah Forgotten dungeon path and Twitchy the chicken. It is still up and moving. However I don’t think the risen would be a great playable race. I think most would be mindless. Cleansing the undead will not make them living either. There’s a spirit in game very upset that her body is carrying on and killing others. Surviving family would probably like the risen to have peace. The more powerful undead with a chance of having a personality after cleansing are often so monsterous, their models wouldnt work in current profession skills. Visions of Eyes of Zhatain doing a warriors hundred blades. No.
But thank you OP, I did have to think on this. It had me thinking what separates the risen from sylvari. Or mordrem to be exact when they are copied from corpses. But I think mordrem are life. Blighted and pale tree pods do seem to be an embryonic sac. The risen are minions. The mordrem; servants and slaves.

Matt H.6142:

Donari.5237:

Wouldn’t a cleansed Risen fall over dead? The thing that makes them move around is the dragon energy.

Look to the Arah Forgotten dungeon path and Twitchy the chicken. It is still up and moving. However I don’t think the risen would be a great playable race. I think most would be mindless. Cleansing the undead will not make them living either. There’s a spirit in game very upset that her body is carrying on and killing others. Surviving family would probably like the risen to have peace. The more powerful undead with a chance of having a personality after cleansing are often so monsterous, their models wouldnt work in current profession skills. Visions of Eyes of Zhatain doing a warriors hundred blades. No.
But thank you OP, I did have to think on this. It had me thinking what separates the risen from sylvari. Or mordrem to be exact when they are copied from corpses. But I think mordrem are life. Blighted and pale tree pods do seem to be an embryonic sac. The risen are minions. The mordrem; servants and slaves.

You are mostly right, but there are a few exceptions to be made i think. Playable Risen would not be your average husk, those are nothing more than puppets without souls. Souls are coming up in the story a lot right now, which I believe actually works in favor of playable Risen.

Your playable Risen starts as a husk, but your soul seeks the body. Whether though cleansing, or through the weakening of Zhaitan’s magic I think it would be possible for the soul to reclaim their bodies.

We haven’t seen souls reclaim bodies before, but there are several events in Orr about souls watching their risen bodies. This means that Orr does have spirits just standing around.

In regards to the risen chicken we know the bodies won’t just fall apart when cleansed. The bodies would still be husks lacking their souls though. This makes us ask what really happens when a Risen is cleansed. What I believe is that it doesn’t erase Zhaitan’s magic, but it keeps the magic holding the body together.

tl:dr – Playable Risen could happen, in theory.

What’s the point? After being cleansed, you would just be another member of the 5 major races. How would it be any different that making kitten survivor player race?

Zaviel.1245:

Orr has room enough for an entire expansion’s worth of content.

When you take into consideration the size of Arah in both story and explorable, there is no room left in Orr except for a small sliver half the width of Lornar’s Pass in height. So no, there is not enough room in Orr. Any room you speak of would be restricted to Scavenger’s Causeway.

Zaviel.1245:

1)Respect the the personal story ending.
Orr has been cleansed for a long time, and the only thing we have to show for it is a buffed Tequatyl. This is a very story-rich location but has been sorely ignored.

Because it’s no longer the story focus. Why would it be featured heavily if the focus is elsewhere?

Until they start doing concurrent plots, we shouldn’t see Orr again.

Zaviel.1245:

2)Keeping Orr/Zhaitan relevant.
As of right now, Zhaitan’s only contribution to the story is being dead. Elder Dragons were described to us as forces of nature. Even in death, Elder Dragons are large and magical enough to alter their environment through presence alone.

The Priory also has Zhaitan’s tail; surely they could learn something about the anatomy of Elder Dragons and what makes them different from any common drake other than magic.

We don’t need Orr to make Zhaitan’s influence relevant. I think he was relevant enough in HoT, despite not being featured in it.

Zaviel.1245:

3)Playable Risen.
Dragon corruption is cleanse-able, and all MMO players like playable races. If we have reason to go back to Orr (which we do) then it would make perfect sense that with the cleansing of Orr Zhaitan’s hold on the Risen will gradually fade, making them easier to cleanse if not cleanse them itself.

No. Just no.

Dragon minions are without free will.

The ritual to give dragon minions free will is stated to be resource expensive and geographically restricted. It would not make any sense for it to be used hundreds of thousands of times while Arah remains the heart of enemy territory (and if it wasn’t, then there’d be not enough risen to purify!).

It makes absolutely no sense in lore.

Zaviel.1245:

Now I didn’t play GW1 much, but I know there are plenty of characters from GW1 that came back as risen, and some of them retained some knowledge and slight willpower. I couldn’t pull out any names, but it is very possible to have a willful Risen come out and lead others into independence. With this new independence the Risen rebuild Arah into their own racial city, like the other races.

There isn’t any risen that was a GW1 character.

Zaviel.1245:

Playable Risen is every bit as story-correct as playable Tengu.

No. It isn’t. At all.

Zaviel.1245:

4)Preparation for the trip to the Crystal Desert.
One of the many great stories Orr could tell would be the start of our journey to the Crystal Desert through a nice chunk of unexplored land to the east of Arah. The Forgotten would have a nice chance to be in this story, especially if you play a Risen or Sylvari, learning more about what dragon corruption actually is/means.

This would also lead us into fighting the Crystal Dragon himself, Kralkatorik. My goal is to hopefully get the ball rolling for what I see to be a very interesting expansion-worthy story/content.
I could go on and on more than I already have, needless to say I would love this.

There is a far shorter and more direct route to the Crystal Desert from both the Fields of Ruin and Mount Maelstrom. There’s no real sense in going from Orr.

Playable undead/evil races tend to come off as cheesy and unbelievable when shoehorned to fit in a multiplayer story and setting. There’s too many elements you have to ignore, like the characters motivation and their relations to others. Suspension of disbelief gets really hard when your character is essential running around constantly and determindly obvious to their single most defining characteristic.

It’s bad enough that you have tainted Sylvari being so blindly cavalier of their condition, but if you have corpses shuffling around Lions Arch and Divinities reach without anyone raising an eyebrow you may as well throw plot and story out the window.

I don’t believe that the prospects are as gloomy as Konig paints them- in particular, the ritual is never indicated to require any particular resources at all, let alone expensive ones, and since ANet treats any given player character as one-of-a-kind I don’t believe the lore would need to justify more than a handful of risen undergoing the ritual. My objection is that the way Guild Wars 2 handles races would make the risen not worth doing. You talk about great racial interplay and digging into dragon corruption, but those just aren’t the sort of thing ANet does with their races. For better or worse, they’ve proven repeatedly unwilling to tell stories tied to the player’s race. Add to that that risen would just be palate swaps on existing races, given the aforementioned work load for the animation and art teams handling the more monstrous models, and the pre-release interviews that told us that the devs are uneasy with including unattractive races (and that was in the context of sylvari faces options!). Having playable zombies just doesn’t seem to add anything to the game, certainly nothing that a more hyped race like the tengu wouldn’t do better.

Aaron Ansari.1604:

the ritual is never indicated to require any particular resources at all, let alone expensive ones,

It wasn’t ingame, but was stated that the ritual used on Glint was both resource extensive and had certain geographical requirements..

Aaron Ansari.1604:

since ANet treats any given player character as one-of-a-kind I don’t believe the lore would need to justify more than a handful of risen undergoing the ritual.

The Commander is an individual who slew Zhaitan – another issue with risen player race that wouldn’t be true for an individual tengu – but the existence of other players are treated as general adventurers in the story too. So there’d still be hundreds of thousands “risen adventurers” running around…

Which makes no sense.

Aaron Ansari.1604:

Having playable zombies just doesn’t seem to add anything to the game, certainly nothing that a more hyped race like the tengu wouldn’t do better.

And other than the undead niche, the only purpose they hold is the whole – and imo silly – ‘minion of the enemy’ niche which is already filled (and failed, imo) with sylvari.

We need more of these http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Spooky_Zombie_Tonic i only have 5 left.

To me, the only playable undeads that might make sense would be from Joko’s forces in Elona. But if we’re getting another playable race from Elona, I think I would rather have a unique take on the djinn. Though that idea is a whole nother kettle of fish.

Yeah, making Risen as a playable race would be problematic to say the least, but I do have to say it would be interesting to have free will Risen as an almost minor race trying to make a living in the remains of Orr, after being cleansed by the Pact in multiple experiments on the Altar of Glaust. They likely wouldn’t be numerous, and their continued existence would be questionable with no way to “reproduce” but they could definitely provide interest to the region.

Narcemus.1348:

They likely wouldn’t be numerous, and their continued existence would be questionable with no way to “reproduce” but they could definitely provide interest to the region.

That does open up another line of questioning regarding their existence, because Glint didn’t seem to have a problem giving “birth” to Glimmer, the numerous eggs from the Dragon’s Lair mission, the egg that’s now in Tarir, and possibly the crystal spiders and guardians.

We know that the Forgotten ritual servers the mental domination aspect between a dragon minion and its master, but are we sure if it servers the connection to their magic and its corruptive nature? It could be possible that a powerful enough Risen could corrupt or “give birth” in the same manner that Glint did.

Glint’s a dragon champion. Dragon champions can make minions, even out of compressed ‘corruption’ – like branded crystals. And they could take the appearance of eggs (like the destroyer eggs in the skritt storyline).

The Pale Tree and Malyck’s tree is the same – or at least similar enough.

But unless the risen turned are champions, I couldn’t see them spreading a ‘purer corruption’.

But it’s not really reproduction either. Only way those eggs of Glint’s was actual reproduction would be if she was corrupted while pregnant and the eggs went into stasis for several thousand years (or have a super long gestation period).

Playable undead just sounds like forsaken in WoW. They are dead. They have no mind of there own. Spirits like the ones that inhabit Eyes of Zhitan where still under the control of Zhitan. Spirits do not remain with there body’s often in Guild Wars lore. Also I can’t see a reason to make a playable undead race. Other than just forcing one for the sake of it.i also don’t see the point in going back to Orr. I don’t see any reason to. It’s been cleansed. Life will return, but I don’t need to go there to see that. I’m not seeing the relevance in going to Orr at any point.

I’m not familiar enough with the lore to remember if there was an example that contradicts this, but they really just feel like corpses animated by Zhaitan’s influence to me, without the original person in any relevant sense. If any of that person is left, cleansing Orr is just about laying them to rest.

I’d sooner expect to see Ascalon ghosts regain their free will. That could be a twist on the ritual and have more meaningful consequences, but it would be hard to make them playable either, since they’re just human, and their gear would lose its color and be transparent (at least with their current design).

There is one ascalonian ghost who is gaining her free will back, but she was described as a powerful Necromancer, giving her an advantage. Still, I think if anything were to happen to the Ascalonian ghosts it would be freeing them and allowing them to move on, not making them a “race”. The Risen as a minor race makes some sense just because of the fact that it’s proven that dragon minions can be freed and coexist with the other races through he Sylvari. Though likely they would be like the dwarves and possibly the exalted, they would be a dying race with no means of reproduction.

Narcemus.1348:

There is one ascalonian ghost who is gaining her free will back, but she was described as a powerful Necromancer, giving her an advantage. Still, I think if anything were to happen to the Ascalonian ghosts it would be freeing them and allowing them to move on, not making them a “race”. The Risen as a minor race makes some sense just because of the fact that it’s proven that dragon minions can be freed and coexist with the other races through he Sylvari. Though likely they would be like the dwarves and possibly the exalted, they would be a dying race with no means of reproduction.

But the Sylvari are alive. Risen are not. Hard to free a corpse.

Risen aren’t really corpses though, no more than icebrood, branded, mordrem, or destroyers are. Dragon corruption seems to fundamentally change the composition of what’s corrupted. What started out as a corpse, is a corpse no longer in this case.

Yeah, based on what we understand of dragon minions, Sylavri are no more or less alive than a freed risen, icebrood, or destroyer would be. They are woven together from plant material and given an identity which, in my mind, is no different from the risen being sewn together and implanted win whatever thought a Zhaitan found necessary.

It’s a little ambiguous at which level the Risen are mindless and soulless. The Brutes and Thralls clearly are, but we also know that Zhaitan has the ability to pull souls from the Underworld and trap them in their former bodies, their free will overridden by servitude to Zhaitan. It seems likely that the priests that guard the temples both outside and within Arah have had their souls infused into their bodies, and those souls might re-establish control were they to be cleansed. Not all of those priests are monstrous.

However, for most of the true Orrian Risen (as opposed to non-natives from elsewhere that became Risen) it’s unclear what side of the line they’re on. Some of the Orrian Risen, particularly the nobles and spellcasters, appear to have a bit more autonomy and personality than the Brutes and Thralls. Did they have their souls called back, or do they simply have a greater degree of sentience because Zhaitan invested more into them? And does it really matter for the purposes of this discussion? A cleansed Risen Wizard (for instance) might not have the original soul, but it might still have its own personality based on that of the original soul.

Another question that would arise, though, is whether a sapient Orrian Risen would want to continue living if cleansed. The Orrians were the most pious of the humans, and they could well view their ‘second life’ as a blasphemy to be ended as soon as possible. Such a Risen might respond to a cleansing by imparting whatever knowledge it considers useful to the living, and then insisting that it be sent to Grenth as soon as possible.

Either way, the playable races are intended to be the main races of Tyria, explaining why they’re the bulk of forces that appear in large events. I’m not inclined to think that cleansing is likely to give them the numbers to be one-sixth of a zerg.