Guild Wars 2

I think it’s just going to be Braham, maybe with Rox tagging along more because she doesn’t want him to get killed. Marjory had her “don’t tell me what I can and can’t do” moment, but what she’s doing is still part of the team effort – investigating Lazarus is potentially dangerous but useful, and that exchange gave me more of an “I understand the risks and I’m willing to take them” feel than a “You’re not my real daddy!” feel.

I suspect they will find ways to fold Logan and Zojja into the background – particularly Zojja, since Felicia Day seems to be hard to book time for these days.

draxynnic.3719:

I suspect they will find ways to fold Logan and Zojja into the background – particularly Zojja, since Felicia Day seems to be hard to book time for these days.

Well, I can only speak for myself but I’m speaking with my wallet until Anet fixes this. :\

I take canceling to mean purifying rather than annihilation.

Mordremoth vs Zhaitan (life vs undeath)

• Plant = tissue + life
• Death = tissue + undeath
• Life = ~undeath
• Plant + death = unexploitable tissue
• like holy damage vs undead, or cleaning orr.

Jormag vs Primordius (heat vs cold)

• Fire = hot gaseous water (pyrolysis)
• Ice = cold solid water
• Fire + ice = liquid water
• in the ice fractal we see how fire can block cold but cold can also extinguish fire. We can step into the flames to warm us up to normal, but excess is also harmful.

Bubbles vs Kralkatorrik (the water cycle)

• water + crystallization = ice
• water + air + ice crystals = cloud
• clouds = rainwater + lightning
• rainwater and lightning are purer than the water and air they come from.

Edit: gw1 had no elementals with a weakness to lightning damage. And there is only one elemental that even uses air magic, and it also uses earth magic. Some creatures of stone were resistant, but stone is of Primordius so that can’t be the pairing.

Daniel Handler.4816:

I take canceling to mean purifying rather than annihilation.

Like Caladbolg? Which was a subverted version of Mordremoth’s magic, used to attack Zhaitan’s energy. There is precedent.

perilisk.1874:

Daniel Handler.4816:

I take canceling to mean purifying rather than annihilation.

Like Caladbolg? Which was a subverted version of Mordremoth’s magic, used to attack Zhaitan’s energy. There is precedent.

I like, honestly, how there are parallels and cancellations (which seems like neutralizing more to me), but absorbing the magic from any dragon, even your parallel, gives you more power. It’s kinda odd, and I’d love for them to explain how that is exactly, but I think it’s cool. I see it as, it doesn’t cancel out your powers when you absorb them because it’s now your power – plus, it can only be absorbed to a certain extent due to the different spectrums of magic – for example, mordremoth could only use corpses. If he fully absorbed his share of the death spectrum, there’d be risen under his command.

Was forest in bitterfrost teaser of what will mean Woodland Cascades? whole arena looking like that with griffons and centaurs.

Being pretty much used to region surrounded by mountain, nice box impression. But they are cappable of doing water as border that push you due to strong current. Why that change? reasons: ascended aqua breathers – prep for that lake-like-sea of drakkar.
Teasing forset for woodland cascades. Introducing to bitterfrost mechanic that is killing way of jormag, and how we can fight it. Its sure that region controled by drakkar is full of bitterfrost or was it bittercold, so there was needed proper introduction.

Rox talking about beach remind master of whispers who always talked about retiring and spending time on beach in Istan.

Those artifacts that use lightning to melt ice walls. Due to desing would connect it to grey blue eye floating bald with four hands covered with spider webs and infusion specs that assumed to leave legacy for future gens – seers.

They on purpose didn’t talk about jotun.

Kodan and quaggan, spirit of fire. Those big torches very climatic.

One thing I noticed today was that the Kodan have knowledge of many Worldly events across Tyria despite their isolation. I would normally find it hard to imagine they know of things like Thaumonova, but clearly knowledge is being passed to them, presumably by adventurers, and even into the wild lands beyond Frostgorge.

perilisk.1874:

Daniel Handler.4816:

I take canceling to mean purifying rather than annihilation.

Like Caladbolg? Which was a subverted version of Mordremoth’s magic, used to attack Zhaitan’s energy. There is precedent.

Yeah exactly like Caladbolg.

We discussed earlier that Zhaitan’s death made Mordremoth stronger, but everyone could not agree how it made him stronger.

The Plant/Death/Destroyer hybrids are much easier to categorize. Its difficult to determine what of the Mordrem comes from Death Magic.

My guess is the patchy texture to the hybrids is because the death and plant magic on them are behaving like oil and water.

Randulf.7614:

One thing I noticed today was that the Kodan have knowledge of many Worldly events across Tyria despite their isolation. I would normally find it hard to imagine they know of things like Thaumonova, but clearly knowledge is being passed to them, presumably by adventurers, and even into the wild lands beyond Frostgorge.

Aye, and the quaggan chief during one of the story steps beneath that location will reference a quaggan village to the south whom you saved (I can’t remember the name at this moment).

The open world story events and references like this were highlights imo, I liked having new zones have races recognizing my work.

I found the episode to be enjoyable with nice worldbuilding particularly for the kodan, including Koda’s Flame. It was surprising to see no reference to a Voice or Claw in the sanctuary despite us talking to a kodan leader, as it was surprising to see a quaggan village being referred to as a Deeps akin to krait settlements. Perhaps Deeps isn’t a uniquely krait term and can refer to other aquatic races’ settlements too.

The consistent misspelling of Asgeir as Aesgir baffled me. Talon Bladedancer originally had the norn’s name misspelled (until it was fixed), so I wonder if this misspelling found its way into the devs’ “Lore Bible”, it was a mistake on the writer’s part, or they actually referenced GW2 wiki and just copy&pasted the misspelling from there.

I liked seeing the Jotun Scroll return to the story. It would be interesting if it was indeed a different scroll than Asgeir’s and if the narrative ended up pointing out later how Knut might’ve kept the original scroll hidden on purpose to not encourage the norn to take the fight to Jormag just yet, which could lead to further friction between the reasonable norn elders and the impulsive youths following Braham. Then again, this plot might be too similar to Smodur and the Claw of the Khan-Ur, so perhaps the writers don’t want to go that route.

I enjoyed the subtle hints of jotun lore sprinkled throughout the map: the stelae, the runes etc. which point to Bitterfrost having been of some significance to the ancient jotun. Perhaps the ancient thawing laser devices that we use to get through the ice in the story (and to get to that one hidden chest behind the waterfall) might be of ancient jotun origin as well, and if so, I wonder what other secrets of the jotun still await those brave enough to discover them and their meaning. Hopefully this is something that will be expanded upon in potential future maps in the Far Shiverpeaks as jotun lore is quite intriguing and could benefit from being expanded.

Braham’s outburst left me conflicted as I can sympathize with both his opponents and defenders. It’s a bit weird to me how he’s acting against the tenets of Raven and Wolf, how he didn’t seem to care for Rox nearly getting killed, and how he’s still grieving in such an aggressive manner after so many months since Eir’s death. At least the latter was set up all the way in Season 1 where he buried his pain of being dumped by Ottilia by going to bash some heads in the Queen’s Gauntlet. The events of this episode also explain why we were given such a heavy focus on Eir’s funeral in Episode 1; it was all about setting up Braham’s conflict in a very sly way, and I appreciate such thematic subtleness.

Although some of Braham’s accusations were erroneous, the Commander walked into the situation without realizing just how much pain Braham was still in, and the back and forth between them set up the growing rift between the two with the Commander coming to the realization of approaching the matter in the wrong way all too late. I sincerely hope that Braham will at least apologize to Rox if nothing else later on as she’s the person he’s spent time with the most.

Another interesting tidbit was seeing the Svanir who appear to be Sons of Svanir transitioning into Icebrood. Although I enjoyed the little dialogue we had with the leading Svanir and how our actions had consequences later on in the story, I felt bad seeing these Svanir baddies being relegated to essentially dumb comic relief (“Even the grawl are smarter than the Svanir”). I hope that one day we get to see an intelligent Svanir or Icebrood villain to prevent this flanderization of the villain faction. It was also odd that the Svanir didn’t recognize the Commander in the disguise but maybe it’s because they haven’t fully transitioned into Icebrood yet and thus don’t have the hivemind ability to recognize someone not belonging to them yet.

The revelation about plant and death magic being detrimental to one another in the case of the Icebrood abomination was quite curious. Although it makes sense in the overall Season 2 lore of the push and pull of the orbs seen around Thyria in the Omadd’s machine cinematic, it makes me retroactively wonder why Mordremoth would absorb Zhaitan’s death magic and thus potentially weaken itself and its minions as a result. Did it have a choice in the matter? Can dragons filter out detrimental aspects of their opposing dragon’s magic if given time to keep only the juicy bits of it for their own use, or is something else going on here? Hopefully the topic will be explored more in the future once Taimi has other breakthroughs in her research.

Overall, the episode is yet another solid release with some weird hiccups in the narrative as in the previous releases. It’ll be interesting to see what’s in store for our adventuring party in the next episode and how all these story elements will be woven together.

i haven’t checked myself but if braham does have a green glow maybe he is being slightly mind controlled by jormag whom now has some of mordremoths abilities who also wanted him to get the scroll and lead the norn to an unprepared fight and be wiped out and rox was going to tell us braham has been fighting off some sort of communication jormag has been sending him (dreams, telepathy, visions etc…).