Guild Wars 2

Is there any lore regarding respawn?

Why is it that when we die (or is it called knocked out?), we can respawn at any waypoint. Just curious if there is any lore regarding the power of a waypoint or am I just thinking too much about a simple in-game mechanic.

I’m fairly certain that the current lore isn’t that we die, but merely that we get knocked unconscious or lose consciousness from bleeding or whatever. I don’t know that there is a specific lore reason given that I’ve yet heard, but there are theories, such as an emergency teleport to take you away from danger before you die or what have you. I’m sure one of the more knowledgable lore keepers here can bring in a long lost article that gave the answer to this that I’ve never seen though.

As Narcemus says, player characters never die – that’s why ArenaNet uses “downed” and “defeated” in terminology rather than dead. Defeated state is basically unconsciousness.

As for specifically why we can waypoint while defeated… I don’t think it’s ever actually said. But waypoints are a thing in lore, with some background and even seeing NPCs using it (NPCs always have to walk underneath a waypoint to use it, so unclear if this is the lore way to use them or if it’s just to show us that the NPCs are leaving via waypoint – I would expect the former as this explains why the Pact NPCs are stranded if those waypoints are meant to exist in lore).

Aside from plot armor, they can use the idea of an Asuran emergency device prototype, that is given our characters and that teleports us back to the nearest waypoint (or our choice)

There are things like these in many other RPGs.
My favourite would be in Shadowrun, where you can buy a licence and depending on how much you pay for it you can even get extracted by a special forces team.

Overall though, we don´t have a real explanation and we should regard the dead of our character as the leads in a long running Tv-show. They die, but often it was just a fleshwound.

On GW1, there was some lore on resurrection. I think the Gods allowed us the players to get resurrected so we could get favor (sucks for NPCs…). That’s why you had many resurrect skills as well as all the resurrection shrines.
On GW2, I have no idea if there’s any lore behind reviving.

Officially, the art of resurrection has been ‘lost’ somewhere in the couple hundred years between the games. The devs were never very clear on why (not from a lore perspective), but they were pretty adamant that it’s just not something that’s done anymore.

The lack-of-resurrection in modern times is even highlighted in a small handful of side dialogues as well as CoF explorable mode, where Gaheron’s trying to become resurrected. It’s denoted as something that hasn’t been done in lifetimes (well, for the major races). The particular method Gaheron’s trying to resurrect even more rarer – though Magg clearly doesn’t know/acknowledge it, the only other individual to resurrect without a body was Shiro Tagachi.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

The lack-of-resurrection in modern times is even highlighted in a small handful of side dialogues as well as CoF explorable mode, where Gaheron’s trying to become resurrected. It’s denoted as something that hasn’t been done in lifetimes (well, for the major races). The particular method Gaheron’s trying to resurrect even more rarer – though Magg clearly doesn’t know/acknowledge it, the only other individual to resurrect without a body was Shiro Tagachi.

If only PC could actually die (instead of defeated), and to come back to life, you’d actually have to go murder a Canthan emperor.

That ended poorly for the last guy.

Good day my Lore Masters
I was just browsing the forum when I spotted this discussion- and a thought hit me:
The elder dragons have access to the thoughts of their ‘minions’, and in many cases, their minions were created before the dragon(s) awoke-
Wouldn’t the minions have a knowledge of the resurrection signet, Paragon yells, and old school Monk techniques in general?
I’m sorry I asked if it’s a canon sore spot
Thank you!

well the risen do seem to have their past abilities (with a necro like twist)

^That, although, at the risk of starting an argument that can’t be won, it’s unclear how much info a dragon actually gleans from the brains of its minions, and as far as we’ve seen, they do not facilitate a transfer of that information from one minion to another. Individual minions may retain the techniques, if they’ve been given enough intelligence to handle them, but they aren’t passed around the entire risen/icebrood/whathaveyou horde.

First off, different dragons function differently, and as Aaron pointed out we don’t know the extent of this ‘information transfer’.

Of all dragon minions, risen retain their original knowledge and persona the most (Mordrem Guard do too but technically speaking they don’t seem to be corrupted – but this is an entirely different cup of tea). But just because the ancient Orrians that were corrupted might know resurrection spells doesn’t mean they would still work – let alone risen using them. After all, if the spells worked still, I think the Order of Whispers if not the Durmand Priory would have and use them.

Furthermore, there’s little to no need for risen to use resurrection spells. In the novels, it’s repeatedly shown how risen in general just keep moving no matter how much you cut them down – the only way to beat them is to simply chop them into such tiny pieces that they cannot render harm to others (in both EoD and SoS, there are scenes showing the severed limbs of risen still twitching and trying to fight – this is also shown with the disembodied risen arms throwing rocks at players, and iirc there is an asura lab somewhere where they effectively liquify risen and… that liquid is moving like its alive; then there’s also the other asura lab where risen body parts start coming together on their own to form an abomination – the irony of all this is that there is a Pact npc in Fort Trinity which says “anything that kills the living kills the risen” – hah! bet he didn’t last long in Orr). The only exception to this seems, oddly, to be champions (read: Whiting and The Maw from SoS).

Tangent aside now… Other than risen, the only dragon minion group that might have access to ressurection spells would be the icebrood (branded are too new, destroyers typically don’t corrupt the living, mordrem also too new, and DSD’s minions are unknown but if theory about dragon orb placement in The All is right then the DSD corrupts inanimate environments to make minions, like Primordus and Mordremoth, rather than corrupts living beings like Jormag, Zhaitan, and Kralkatorrik). But of icebrood, only champions seem to retain their personality, and in turn likely only they retain the ability to strategize enough to use resurrection spells if they could.

But again, I’d point out that there’s a good chance that the older organizations like the Order of Whispers and Durmand Priory (if not others) still retain the spells used for resurrection – thus the only reason they don’t use such is because that magic simply stopped working, which would mean even dragon minions couldn’t use that magic even if they wanted to.

considering all the things leaving the underworld kinda makes me think dhuum is somehow stopping/weakening rez spells? (you would think the reapers of grenth would do something about the weaken barriers “to keep dhuum/other things from trying to get out”)

That’s a good point. We don’t know what’s going on in the Underworld but it does seem like there could be a few options. For one there could be some major turmoil there based on the types of creatures that come from portals thus Grenth might not have control over the flow of spirits. And the other option is perhaps Grenth disallowed he return of spirits from the dead due to the weakness of the barriers between the Underworld and Tyria. Trying to keep the barrier from breaking anymore.

The only trouble with pinning the rez spell failure on Dhuum or Grenth is that the spells aren’t around for the non-humans either. Unless the human gods are far more influential in the Mists then those races are willing to admit, that means something else went on, or is still going on.

Well we know that the human Gods must have some degree of control over the souls of other races. I mean the Mad King’s Realm is a subsection of the Underworld, which is assumed to still be under the control of one of the human Gods, Grenth or possibly Dhuum, but within the Mad Realm are spirits of at least 3 races, humans, Asura, and Charr (don’t remember if Norn are there or not). Also, if you want to go way back you have the example of the Charr (whose name I have forgotten) whom you help get revenge against the Titans for using his race. He is located in the Realm of torment, and he was placed there for likely the same reason as everyone else, in an attempt to control Abaddon’s Maddness.

There are norn in the lunatic court.

I think the main reason that the Resurrection Signets and shrines and the like have been forgotten is simply because they’re a lore black hole. Trivializing death makes for clunky lore. At the start of Nightfall’s tutorial, Kormir literally kills you and stands around for a few seconds until a shrine activates and resurrects you. She then talks about how this gives the Sunspears a powerful advantage. How does that start a compelling story when your NPC leader is telling you “Don’t worry about dying, you’ll come back”? Why should we be worried later in the campaign when the Kournans are going to execute the captive Kormir, wouldn’t she just be resurrected? How does one stop a shrine from working? Why didn’t it work on Prince Rurik or Althea or Saidra or whoever else, what makes them inferior to the PCs? Why can’t you use your Resurrection Signet or your Flesh of my Flesh spell on those NPCs? Why is it a big deal with Shiro kills the party in Vizunah Square and you need the Envoys to intervene, when every other time your party would get killed you just resurrect with a small penalty like nothing went wrong?

The only time lore really played into it was with the Bloodstone and its ability to prevent resurrection, but even that wound up being more about the White Mantle powering Soul Batteries rather than ensuring that their massacred Chosen wouldn’t resurrect to bring about the Flameseeker Prophecies. If the White Mantle were so scared of the Chosen that they had to bring hundreds or thousands of people to Bloodstones to ensure they were killed permanently and wouldn’t resurrect, then how could the Charr have succeeded in attacking Ascalon, even with the Searing, knowing that every human struck down by raining fire would simply resurrect at the nearest shrine?

I have to assume that along the way, the lore team decided that making death trivial and seemingly random in its permanence was a bad thing. Without Resurrection Signets or spells in Guild Wars 2, we don’t see people on forums asking “Why can’t we just use X to bring back (Insert Beloved NPC here)”. Gaheron aside, we now have a distinction between when there’s a “Press F to Revive” prompt, showing the ability to resuscitate an unconscious ally, and a body just lying there without a prompt or symbol (besides Press F to Pay Respect), showing a character who’s actually dead. It can’t fix the silliness that surrounded the concept of death in Guild Wars 1, but it at least can provide consistency going forward.

i kinda dont think the tutorial was canon (since kormir kinda ask you to left click her xD)
(well more like it didnt happen the way we saw it)

Tutorials have a tendency to break the fourth wall but they are still technically canon – else you’d be able to argue that all of pre-Searing was not canon.

And spearing of pre-Searing, it is stated that a priest has to maintain the shrine in order for it to resurrect fallen adventurers. There is even a couple resurrection shrines in pre-Searing which lack priests nearby and do not resurrect – this was largely forgotten in Prophecies but was brought back (halfway) in Factions with the Kurzick and Luxon Priests – if you’re not allied with them (either via faction point majority or via bribing), they will not resurrect you. In Nightfall and Eye of the North, every shrine had someone maintaining it (Kourna had priests, for example, while Desolation had souls and Realm of Torment had Forgotten Wardens) – they also all gave bounties in these cases.

So the resurrection shrine wasn’t as big of a black hole for lore as Xiahou proclaims – there was both a stated and shown allegiance situation with the shrine’s maintainers, as well as a situation okittennowledgement (the shrines only become active if you get near them – ergo ‘when the maintainer knows you’re there’), and quite possibly a situation of distance too (would explain why you couldn’t be resurrected in the next map over, and why folks died in mission areas in Prophecies – no shrines there).

Resurrection in general did leave a bit of a loophole, but it was not unique to shrines – if anything, resurrection shrines were the best written, shown, and explained part of resurrection lore aside from the Bloodstone’s influence on it.