Guild Wars 2

Sirius.4510:

I figure the Eir memorial was more important to the narrative (since Rytlock was more likely to be there, and hence the conversation about starting a new guild; plus it ties up the loose end with Garm) than Trahearne. It doesn’t necessarily mean nothing happened to honor Trahearne though, just that we didn’t get to see it. With 8-9 months between the end of HoT and now, there’s certainly timeline space to put it in somewhere.

And why is tying up Garm’s loose end more important than tying up any of the many other loose ends exactly? The new guild start could just as well happen when meeting with Taimi, unless Rytlock lost all interest in the stuff going on. So no real need for attending any funeral. And even if it IS good for a smooth start, why the heck does Eir have to be a dear friend regardless of how much/little she and the PC were involved together due to the PC’s origin? Or do I have to imagine it to happen off screen as well? “Please go make your own fanfic so the canon makes sense”?

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Branded are also riled up. We have seen this in the Current Events.

Though we’ve been told that the Svanir and Icebrood have been becoming more active in the PS. In Flame and Frost. And in S2, E3.

Icebrood have been getting more and more riled up for the past four years now, if not longer.

I guess it makes sense. The longer the dragons are awake, the more active their minions become.

While it would be nice to be battling against two dragons at the same time, it would probably tax Anet’s resources too much.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Branded are also riled up. We have seen this in the Current Events.

Though we’ve been told that the Svanir and Icebrood have been becoming more active in the PS. In Flame and Frost. And in S2, E3.

Icebrood have been getting more and more riled up for the past four years now, if not longer.

It’s possible that they’ve been riled up and then beaten down. In fact, S2, E3 has exactly this: they’re riled up, we go in and take out the ringleaders, and that calms things down enough that Knut can attend the summit.

Technically we only beat down one Svanir base, out of many. Granted, it’s one of the larger ones, but that one has been around with shamans of the same rank since 1325.

We give the norn a little breathing room, but only for a few weeks at best.

And while we did beat down the Icebrood – to a degree – in 1325 (what with the PS norn storylines, the Priory storyline, and the Grawl/Quaggan storylines), they remained an increasing threat at the end of HotW, despite that beat down too.

In other words, all we’ve been doing is stalling tactics. And it’s been four years since we did so – two since we did a minor stalling. And there’s been a huge influx of magic for the past year now in-game.

And now bloodstone shards flinging as far as Ascalon, apparently. If Jormag or Kralkatorrik get their hands on those like Zhaitan had its hands on the five the High Priests had, even more reason for an assault to being.

I’m not so sure having us fight two dragons would “tax Anet’s resources too much” – because I think they’re leading us into fighting all three primarily active Elder Dragons: Primordus, Jormag, and Kralkatorrik.

And doing such would hasten the Elder Dragon plot along which has been going on for four years now (if we discount EotN). I think they – and players – are wanting a new plot sooner rather than later. So gearing up for a three-sided fight against the Elder Dragons is one way to do so.

We only beat down one base out of many, sure, but from memory it was at least strongly implied that it was that one that was largely responsible for Knut’s headache at the time, and while an event to beat down the three shamans had always been there, it was significantly beefed up for that story step (the final phase at least certainly wasn’t there beforehand).

It’s also worth remembering that the Pact Commander isn’t the only one that can do anything in the world – it’s entirely likely that the Sons of Svanir and the icebrood have a cycle of being stirred up and then smacked down by the local norn without our involvement. ArenaNet tells us the SoS are being stirred up every time they want to build up tension in the Shiverpeaks, but just because they never tell us that things have calmed down doesn’t mean that it’s always ratcheting up without relief. It might be that sometimes things get calmed down without out involvement.

Heck, even in the case of that S2 story step, it’s entirely likely that the situation would have been resolved without the PC getting involved – the PC’s involvement was simply a matter of earning a favour. Knut probably could have dealt with it, he just couldn’t deal with it and attend the summit.

anninke.7469:

And why is tying up Garm’s loose end more important than tying up any of the many other loose ends exactly?

It isn’t, but it has to happen sometime.

Regarding Rytlock, I sort of doubt he would be as compelled to show for a Trahearne memorial. They never really had much to do with each other.

After absorbing the bloodstone, Lazarus must smell like bacon to the elder dragons. All the magic that had been hid away by the seers, has been released and contained in one Mursaat. This could explain Primordus’ recent activity.

One could speculate, that primordus will hunt down Lazarus, Lazarus will eventually make it to the fire island where he will be engaged by Primordus. Primordus will win, but be extremely weakened.

Why the Fire Islands. I don’t get why people keep going “Primordus will be at the Fire Islands” when the natural volcanic island chain has nothing to do with Primordus and the closest Primordus’ forces have ever been is in the Tarnished Coast.

That said, I don’t think Lazarus would be any more desireable than the magic out in the open world, which is not only plentiful but also won’t be fighting back.

Furthermore, Lazarus still has his phasing out ability which is Arah explorable is any indication, is a near perfect defense against dragon minions. Especially when combined with spectral agony.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Why the Fire Islands. I don’t get why people keep going “Primordus will be at the Fire Islands” when the natural volcanic island chain has nothing to do with Primordus and the closest Primordus’ forces have ever been is in the Tarnished Coast.

That said, I don’t think Lazarus would be any more desireable than the magic out in the open world, which is not only plentiful but also won’t be fighting back.

Furthermore, Lazarus still has his phasing out ability which is Arah explorable is any indication, is a near perfect defense against dragon minions. Especially when combined with spectral agony.

I speculate that Lazarus will go to the fire islands. This is because there were so many Mursaat fortifications there. Primordus will follow him there, because Primordus is drawn by Lazarus’ magic.

There was a lot of magic in the bloodstone, that is now contained in Lazarus. Primordus may not realize it’s in Lazarus. He may only know that a large concentration of Magic that wasn’t available before, is now available. It’s not Lazarus, but the magic in him that Primordus would want.

But with the magic of Mordremoth and Zhaitan out in the open world now, would he really care about 1/5th-or-1/4th of part of Zhaitan’s hibernating magic (from when the gods strengthened the Bloodstone by drawing magic from Zhaitan – I wonder if that’s why Zhaitan was so easily taken done, rather than just the weeks of starving)?

I’m not really sure. Plus, if Lazarus just phases out of existence, wouldn’t that be basically taking the magic out of reach and out of “smell” of Primordus? Maybe.

It’s possible that Lazarus will go after other bloodstones, but if so I suspect that a clash – if one happens – will be at the Shiverpeak bloodstone (which would be perfectly placed in that spot between Timberline and Sparkfly).

Konig Des Todes.2086:

But with the magic of Mordremoth and Zhaitan out in the open world now, would he really care about 1/5th-or-1/4th of part of Zhaitan’s hibernating magic (from when the gods strengthened the Bloodstone by drawing magic from Zhaitan – I wonder if that’s why Zhaitan was so easily taken done, rather than just the weeks of starving)?

I’m not really sure. Plus, if Lazarus just phases out of existence, wouldn’t that be basically taking the magic out of reach and out of “smell” of Primordus? Maybe.

It’s possible that Lazarus will go after other bloodstones, but if so I suspect that a clash – if one happens – will be at the Shiverpeak bloodstone (which would be perfectly placed in that spot between Timberline and Sparkfly).

I’m curious why you think the level of magic in the bloodstone was so low. Especially considering the size of the blast when the magic was released. The four remaining elder races put all their magic into the original bloodstone. This is magic that has been hidden from the dragons since. It’s new magic for the most part due to the fact it had been shielded from the dragons until a week ago.

Because we were told that the Bloodstone(s) have been leaking magic at least since the gods gifted magic out (if not sooner). The magic from the Bloodstone had been less than the ambient magic in the world too, as part of the lack of restrictions in GW2 (and retroactively, the dual professions in GW1 we were told).

The only reason, by all indication (read: the journals), that the Bloodstone had so much magic is because it absorbed a fair amount from Zhaitan’s and Mordremoth’s deaths. And even then, since the White Mantle cracked that Bloodstone’s shell, it’s been leaking magic at a faster rate – while only for a few years, we aren’t sure of the rate of increase either.

We really don’t know how much magic was released by Abaddon when he gifted magic – it could have been most of the magic – but we don’t know how much magic was put back in either (though we know it is not as much as was released, else the world would have been nigh magicless again).

I’ve always assumed (and the lore changes between the games hasn’t changed that) that the way that the four schools were set by the four bloodstones indicates that the majority of magic was still in the bloodstones immediately after they were split. Instead of having just released everything, the bloodstones were set to radiate magic, so that a spellcaster attuned to that bloodstone can access magic from that bloodstone and use it.

We can’t really say for sure how much magic was still in the bloodstone compared to how much there was originally, but we can say this: the explosion of the Bloodstone was going to be a LOT bigger than Zhaitan (effectively no explosion) and Mordremoth (entirely contained along ley lines such that even at ground zero we survived): NPCs estimate that if it hadn’t been sucked in the blast radius could have engulfed Lion’s Arch, making it on par or even greater than past magical cataclysms such as the Jade Wind and the Cataclysm itself.

Now, one contributing factor to this is that the total power of a dragon isn’t ‘centralised’ the way it seems to be for a god: the dragon’s magic is also distributed across its minions and champions, which a) means it’s not all going to be released with the dragon’s death and b) some of what is released may simply channel back into surviving minions. So we can’t really say that the massive blast from the exploding Bloodstone means that there was more magic stored in there than a dragon. On the other hand, we can’t really say that there isn’t. For all we know, Lazarus is genuinely the most magically powerful being on Tyria right now.

Kinda late to give my impressions, but better late than never. I’ll divide my commentary into segments for easier browsing.

1) Eir’s Memorial in Hoelbrak

Although it was unfortunate to not see any kind of vigil for Trahearne, it was at least nice to get a norn-centric event for Eir. Angel McCoy’s comments on Reddit left me somewhat baffled about the PC supposedly having more of an emotional connection to Eir than Trahearne, however, because in the Personal Story the PC actually spends more missions with Trahearne than with Eir even if we counted the dungeon stories Eir appears in and if the PC was norn (and would’ve thus spent the early PS missions with her). I think that a nice solution to appease both side would’ve been to have a general vigil for the fallen where we would’ve honoured not only Eir and Trahearne but also everyone else who fell in the war against Mordremoth. With that said, however, we could perhaps see some sort of moment of remembrance for Trahearne once we visit the Grove as that’d be the perfect moment for it and maybe handwave the lack of an open memorial due to racism towards sylvari still existing after what happened in the jungle invasion. Trahearne’s story may have ended, but at least he should have some sendoff for having played such a major role in the wars against two Elder Dragons before we can truly close the chapter on him for good.

Eir’s memorial did give us nice moments, and I enjoyed the norn focus on it. Not only do we have some resolution for Garm (and tending to the poor wolf was bittersweet; the writing hit the mark there) but also get to witness the naming of Dragon’s Watch as well as learn a bit about Braham and why he’s absent as well as hints towards increased Icebrood activity which could have payoff in a future chapter despite the namedropping of Primordus at the end of the episode. Rytlock had great lines throughout this instance and others, providing some well-timed comic relief without jeopardizing his integrity; his way of remembering Eir, and making him cry if the PC uses the cry emote, were nice touches. It’s a shame that Logan and Zojja are still bedridden, but hopefully we’ll see more involvement from them at some point in S3.

There’s one NPC comment that kind of left me intrigued, however. When talking with the shaman who recaps the story at Eir’s memorial, she mentions us carrying Glint’s egg. I suppose this statement is meant to be canonical instead of just for players’ benefit, but does this mean the Commander’s affiliation with the egg is now widely known? Considering that in HoT story only very few outside of our companions and the Exalted knew of the egg and that the PC would later carry it, I wonder if the information spread because Braham or someone babbled about it unless the PC somehow shared this news between HoT and S3. The only instance from what I recall where the egg was brought up in public was when the PC confronted Ruka at the Pact outpost, but the wording was simply “the egg” so it would be odd if the Pact members witnessing the confrontation could deduce anything useful from that phrasing, especially when at other times the PC was always shown tight-lipped about it except when talking with a select few people that could be trusted.

This, then, opens an interesting discussion if people around Tyria now know of Glint’s egg and its placement in Tarir somehow. How likely are the common people to trust in the egg and the eventual hatchling instead of viewing it as a potential threat to Tyria given the threat other dragons have posed? Given how big a reaction the sylvari betrayal got from Tyrians so much so that even months after the Mordremoth campaign asura are still viewing sylvari like Canach as crazy monsters as Rata Novus showed us, surely the Commander’s affiliation with a dragon who, in many ignorant Tyrians’ mind, could potentially grow into another vicious Elder Dragon, would raise some concerns. Imagine the outroar: not only does the Commander effectively resign from the Pact in its time of need to pursue the new guild’s interests but the Commander also shares some connection to a dragon whose allegiance remains unknown for now. Some doomsayers could start spreading rumors that the PC is “influenced” by the dragon and not trustworthy anymore, and this could lead to drama down the line. I wonder if this is something the narrative will address in the future as it could be an interesting tool for the White Mantle to start a propaganda campaign against the PC and maybe have some people fall for it, for example.

2) Research in Rata Novus

The Rata Novus bits had many nice moments such as Almorra playing a rather critical role (loved her interaction and emotes with Rytlock) as well as little reveals about Windall being more than the clumsy asura he appeared to be and Rytlock avoiding summons to the Black Citadel, all of which appear to set up later story arcs, which is nice. Is Windall working for the Arcane Council, the Inquest, Consortium or some other faction? Why is he, out of all the asura, the most interested in recent events surrounding Taimi? This makes me suspect that him bumping into Taimi wasn’t accidental at all and he’s playing the spy game, so to speak, and it’ll be interesting to see just what role he’ll play in the coming episodes.

Rytlock’s reaction makes me wonder why Ryt still hasn’t opened up about his experiences in the Mists and whether the summons he’s ignoring are from Smodur or if Blood Imperator Bangar, Ryt’s direct superior, could finally be referenced. After all, the ghost problem has lessened somewhat after the botched ritual, and the Flame Legion’s power has diminished after Gaheron’s demise, so Bangar could see this as an opportunity for the Blood Legion to make a move now that there’s less worry about fighting a war on multiple fronts, especially if he learns of the humans’ recent troubles with the White Mantle. Not that I expect us to delve deep into charr politics anytime soon, but this would be the perfect opportunity for Blood to have more of a presence and perhaps make Bangar’s ambitions known as he was never quite a fan of the ceasefire with the humans, and Rytlock’s story (as well as Rox’s unresolved story with the mysterious charr Monti Scythescrape from Season 2) could tie into it.

A couple of things left me a bit confused in the Rata Novus story bit, though.

First, the PC decides to resign from the Pact and become a freelance operative. This feels like a spit in the face of the Pact even if the PC had good intentions and promised to assist the Pact when needed. Now, when a new Marshal has yet to be elected and the Pact could desperately use some moral support, the former Marshal’s right-hand person decides to quit, especially after already hearing criticisms in HoT from NPCs that the Commander should’ve been around more to lead them (even if the PC did delegate officers to lead the campaign in the jungle). Doing something like this in the army at a time of conflict in our world would be akin to treason and the culprit would be taken to a military tribunal for attempted desertion. I can see that the Pact is a more loose organization than that with likely not as severe punishments; we’ve yet to hear how the Pact deserters (as seen in “Torn in the Sky” if we went after the Pale Reavers as a sylvari PC) and the mobs going after sylvari as seen in Verdant Brink events were punished for their transgressions since the events of HoT, if they were punished at all.

I hope both the subplot about the dissidents in the Pact as well as the PC’s rather hasty decision will be addressed down the line with maybe some in the Pact starting to view the PC with disgust for abandoning them at a time of need instead of taking over from Trahearne. Who will the new Marshal be, and if the title is given to a member of one of the orders, will the other two orders be okay with that or go back into bickering (I hope it’s the former)? To avoid all of the political drama that will certainly ensue from the PC’s decision, the PC should’ve simply stayed in the Pact but reassigned themselves into a vanguard of sorts which consists of Dragon’s Watch while explaining that they’re better on the field and that someone more worthy deserves to lead the Pact. That way the PC wouldn’t be seen as deserting the Pact (and thus keeping the soldiers’ morale high) while still going about their own business with the authority they have as the Commander.

Second, I was surprised that humans hardly had any extra dialogue with Canach in this instance. It was somewhat immersion-breaking for me that a human PC had to ask Canach who Caudecus was. This is especially confusing if you play a human noble PC with unknown parents storyline who joined Order of Whispers to help Demmi flee from Caudecus’s goons as that’s a triple whammy of information the PC should know ( 1) the PC would’ve interacted with Caudecus during the trial of Zamon, 2) the PC would know of the White Mantle because the Mantle killed the PC’s parents and nearly the PC too if not for help from Logan and the Shining Blade, and 3) the PC would be aware of Caudecus’s dirty side through the Demmi storyline). I understand that branching dialogue is tricky to implement, but because we did see some nice branching during “Blood and Stone” with race-specific comments while wandering around Bloodstone Fen later on, it shouldn’t have been that difficult to just modify a line or two of our dialogue to make the information dump a bit more graceful so that it wouldn’t make the human PC seem like they hit their head after the Personal Story to forget something as major as who Caudecus, the Legate Minister who’s the second most important person in Kryta, is. Overall I did like how the spoken and written dialogue helped get players who might’ve forgotten about Caudecus and not known about White Mantle up to speed with the political situation and the key players in it.

Other than those two somewhat nitpicky things I had issues with, I did enjoy the character interactions. Taimi and Canach were wonderful as usual, and the revelations about chak organs provided some things for us to think about. It should be interesting to see how Taimi’s research will come into play later on, and I’d be surprised if Taimi essentially being able to monitor Tarir won’t come in handy at some point should, say, something bad happen in the city later on that requires us to travel there. I also wonder if the mystery of the shut door we witnessed back in HoT will come into play later as well and if we’ll learn more about the Rata Novans, many of whom were implied to have successfully evacuated Rata Novus before its fall. Given that Primordus is on the rise, their assistance would be welcomed, and their storyline still has many mysteries to be solved.

I’ll post my impressions of the rest of the chapters of this release later as this post is already long enough as it is and I’m running out of time on my end. There are still quite a few things I’m going to talk and speculate about as this release has been quite rich in lore in many ways I couldn’t have foreseen. Kudos to all the storytellers of ANet (from all sides of the spectrum such as narrative designers, artists, coders, and audio team) for making it a solid release and a fine starting point for things to come for the rest of Season 3.

anninke.7469:

What Aaron wrote.

Also, I see a problem with many people here thinking of funeral as just a way to get disposed of the dead person’s body. If you look at burial customs, very (if not the most) important part of those is to deal with losing someone. You don’t even need a body to do them. Consider all the “fake” funerals when a body could not be retrieved for whatever reason.

Silvary are a race clearly sentient, social and having emotions, so I don’t see how they would feel no need to deal with death. All the more when practically all those deaths are premature and violent. (For some reason one of the posts above felt like “Sylvari have no funerals because none have died naturally of old age so far”, wich sounded terribly wrong.)

And I would like to poit to this translation of memorial writings in Dragon’s Stand with several Sylvari names there – so another example of honoring Sylvari dead (although not by only other Sylvari, but that would be T’s case anyway).

It isn’t so much that the Sylvari aren’t developed enough to deal with death individually; rather there hasn’t been enough time for them to form a codified cultural response to death. An individual may pick up on different ways of dealing with death and grieving loss. As a society though they have yet to form a cultural standard response to death.

Moonyeti.3296:

It isn’t so much that the Sylvari aren’t developed enough to deal with death individually; rather there hasn’t been enough time for them to form a codified cultural response to death. An individual may pick up on different ways of dealing with death and grieving loss. As a society though they have yet to form a cultural standard response to death.

I don’t know… Even very primitive societies have some way to send off their dead and it’s usually a community event. Sylvari have been around for almost 30 years and have seen many deaths during that time; they’ve also seen other races’ burial rites. And they seem to be pretty close to each other emotionally, so approach this individual (or ignorant) doesn’t make much sense to me.

(Side note: Ugh, I’ve just noticed the typo in my earlier post. My eyes bleed… )