Resurrection shrines were really just a platform and a couple pillars. Some were wood too, which would have rotten away. The stone could have been buried by time or been removed to make way for new things.
It is a bit odd that we don’t see any of them in the world but I’m going to bet it is a case of “oversight”.
Dear ANet writers,
Stop treating GW2 as a single story. Each Season and expansion should be their own story.
I’d guess it’s an attempt to remove the confusion of having resurrection shrines in a game without resurrection. The things were tied way too much into GW1 mechanics, and way too little into GW1 lore, to be ported to GW2.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
I’d guess it’s an attempt to remove the confusion of having resurrection shrines in a game without resurrection. The things were tied way too much into GW1 mechanics, and way too little into GW1 lore, to be ported to GW2.
Most of the ruins that are in-game now aren’t particularly important to lore either and are there because players of the original game recognize them. Did something important happen at Fort Koga that it had to be included in the game? What about the Temple of Grenth in Lornar’s Pass? Both of those have practically no importance yet were included in a big way. At least, they could have had a background scene of a few asura tinkering with an old res shrine or a shrine tucked into the ruins somewhere.
There wouldn’t be any confusion, anyone that played GW1 would just see them and have it add to the experience, and any new players would just think it’s an old ruins like all the others.
I agree with that. Just a couple, as easter eggs, wouldn’t have caused any problems. I guess the question then is: are there any? I’ll admit, without the giant glowing ball of overbrilliant frustration, I don’t think I’d be able to distinguish a shrine from surrounding ruins unless I was very specifically keeping an eye out for it.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Resurrection is indeed still in the lore – see Citadel of Flame… path 1 I think, with Magg and destroying the Eternal Flame at the end (and Gaheron’s ghost). They were attempting to resurrect Gaheron without the use of a body (or his body… or something). Something which Magg claims is unheard of, but that’s what Shiro Tagachi more or less did.
Resurrection is still possible, but exceedingly more difficult. So much so, it is thought impossible to resurrect nowadays, to the point where reviving (getting someone up from a defeated – aka unconscious and perhaps near death – state) is a learned skill (per NPCs of an often bugged event in Snowden Drifts; the multi-racial dolyak escort event heading to Snowden Haven).
Dear ANet writers,
Stop treating GW2 as a single story. Each Season and expansion should be their own story.
That’s actually… path 2 I wanna say. Path 1 is engineer/the searing effigy.
Though weirdly enough, in that instance you can go to the back of the room and down a short hallway to a small chamber with a coffin on a pedestal, bound tightly in chains (with the chains secured to the floor). Gaheron’s coffin?
That’s actually… path 2 I wanna say. Path 1 is engineer/the searing effigy.
Though weirdly enough, in that instance you can go to the back of the room and down a short hallway to a small chamber with a coffin on a pedestal, bound tightly in chains (with the chains secured to the floor). Gaheron’s coffin?
The place is called Mausoleum of the Khan-Ur, so it had to be some Flame Legion Imperator more arrogant than wise. Gaheron is as good a guess as any other.
As far as the unprecedented bit goes, Magg only mentions “a body”, and never said whether it was Gaheron’s original or not. Combining that with the rest of the dialogue, where he discusses the implications of what sounds to just be run-of-the-mill resurrection, I don’t think there’s any reason to believe he was referring to a specific sort of rezzing, as opposed to resurrection as a whole.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
Don’t the Resurrection Shrines only work if they are “manned”? Lina mentioned watching over a Shrine in Pre-Searing, while in Factions, some of the Shrines wouldn’t work if you belonged to a Kurzick/Luxon faction, suggesting that without the blessing of the priest maintaining the Shrine, they would not function for you.
With the general departure of the Six Gods from Tyria, perhaps the Resurrection Shrines also lost their ability and were thus abandoned.
As far as the manning goes, I don’t think so. None of the Prophecies shrines (save only Pre-Searing) or the shrines in the first half of Factions had attendants, and most of the Nightfall scouts seemed to only hang around shrines to relay information to people coming out of them, rather than being some integral part of its function. The EotN shrines, at least in the asura and norn areas, were almost entirely attended by people who were supposed to be out killing things but were too lazy to do it themselves.
I think making the shrines reliant on the Gods would be a good move for ANet. They already had some religious themes going, and it would be a tidy answer for why resurrection has died out, at least when combined with the fact that the profession that had most of the rez skills believed they were drawing their power from the gods.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
The shrines might not need to have an attending priest there 24/7 though. In some of the more dangerous areas, perhaps a single priest (or a group of priests) simply have daily routes that go past each of the shrines, performing regular prayers or rituals at each shrine to keep the magic there active.
Perhaps, but there’s nothing to indicate that that’s the case. Many shrines are placed in areas where such long-term persistent presence would be impossible, and many also are in the territory of leaders who want slain adventurers to stay dead and would take any such maintenance group very much amiss.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
The shrines in Nightfall were all manned by priests and spirits, and in the Echovald and Jade Sea, you’d need to earn the priest’s favor (or kill the priest, which indicates that the characters could activate it themselves somehow at that point).
Given that pre-Searing was created after the rest of the game, it wouldn’t surprise me if it was a piece of lore that was made late in Prophecies’ development. It should be noted in Prophecies that there are deactivated resurrection shrines – in pre-Searing, it’s just the one(s?) without a priest, but there was one in… Arid Sea I think, which wkittentered and non-functioning.
Then there’s the whole PvP (and Thirsty River) aspect to consider, where killing the priest shut down the shrine.
It feels like the resurrection shrine was a half-implemented piece of lore. Perhaps out of fear of trivializing death (but really, the half-implementing is what caused the trivializing of it).
Dear ANet writers,
Stop treating GW2 as a single story. Each Season and expansion should be their own story.
In Istan, Vabbi, and some of the Desolation there are scouts, not priests, and a handful of the Istani scouts at least say they were dispatched to issue bounties- nothing about tending the shrines. Likewise, across EotN, where there is an even larger number of dialogues among the bounty NPCs, there are many mentions of some variation of bounty or other, but not a single one I can recall mentions the shrines they’re standing right next to. There’s just nothing linking the NPCs outside of Pre-Searing and the factional regions of Cantha to the shrines except for physical proximity (and even then, there’s at least one active, unmanned shrine in every explorable area in Echovald and the Jade Sea).
I’m definitely with you on the half-implemented part, though- they always gave me a vibe of a gameplay element that was only ostensibly part of the lore- like waypoints, or skill challenges, or weapon mods. Things that, imo, the game would be better off not trying to reconcile to the world, a view which is certainly slanting my opinion here.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
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