Guild Wars 2

ugrakarma.9416:

…. I do not know the lore of Guild Wars 1, what is the gap between the events of Guild Wars 1 and 2? Are they 100, 200 years old? Does this mean that most of the GW1 characters are unknown to the “current generation” and remembered to us as old stories or legends? Those who are alive as Livia, are those who had “something special” to have longevity?

250 ish years. Everyone from GW1 is dead, barring some odd circumstances.

ugrakarma.9416:

…. I do not know the lore of Guild Wars 1, what is the gap between the events of Guild Wars 1 and 2? Are they 100, 200 years old? Does this mean that most of the GW1 characters are unknown to the “current generation” and remembered to us as old stories or legends? Those who are alive as Livia, are those who had “something special” to have longevity?

Pretty ,much. GW2 is 250 years in the future, to get a semi-blank slate for new players to jump in. Thus very few old characters are still alive, so to speak.

Most are legends or stories by now. Many are only referenced by proxy and only people who knew of them in GW (or read up on them) will get something out of them, then. Like in the Lake Doric Map, or the Asura ghosts/holgrams in the Asura starter.

ugrakarma.9416:

…. I do not know the lore of Guild Wars 1, what is the gap between the events of Guild Wars 1 and 2? Are they 100, 200 years old? Does this mean that most of the GW1 characters are unknown to the “current generation” and remembered to us as old stories or legends? Those who are alive as Livia, are those who had “something special” to have longevity?

There was 250 years between the end of GW1 and the beginning of GW2 (give or take, I think War in Kryta – Living Story of GW1 – cuts into that by a few years). Almost everyone from GW1 should be dead unless they live for a long time or had supernatural means of staying alive (Livia had the Scepter of Orr – an incredibly powerful artifact).

Off the top of my head only Livia, MOX, Ogden, Lazarus and almost Glint (was killed a couple years before GW2 begins) have been revealed to be alive today. Multiple Ascalonian ghosts were brought back, almost everyone else should be dead (including the GW1 norn who I think live longer than humans).

It’s likely some other creatures might still be alive just not seen yet – like the seers, forgotten, other dwarves, Palawa Joko and his undead army, and Razzah – a magical humanlike creature.

I have to echo many of the above comments – the idea was good but the execution left much to be desired. It feels like Season 3 was two plots mashed together and they both suffered because of it. It looks to me like the Lazarus plot was supposed to be the main plot but it was clumsily merged with Balthazar as a hook into the expansion. This made the Balthazar reveal confusing (why pretend to be Lazarus, why was he interested in Lazarus at all, it’s just a bloody coincidence to tell the stories parallel). It also made the Lazarus re-reveal confusion – so he was still around and we are still chasing him? I think the season would have been much stronger if it had focused just on Lazarus.

I was shocked (in a bad way) when my charr joined the Shining Blade. The whole idea of my charr joining a human secret cult dedicated to Protecting the human monarch had be crawling in my skin. It felt so unbelievably wrong taking some kind of suicide oath for a poorly established motive. The entire second instance, or at least the bit where we join the Shining Blade, felt entirely unnecessary and conflicts so much with how I see my character. As cool as the secret hideout was, it’s a rehash of the Hidden Arcana trope with the Priory Archive (which was done much better and shows you don’t need a ridiculous suicide oath to access classified information). The fact that there is some magical curse on me that stops me from working against Kryta is horribly wrong, especially as a charr.

The actual act of joining the cult came off as comical to me, which was the wrong tone considering the gravity of what the oath means. If I didn’t feel so out of character joining them I would have laughed at the cringe dialogue while the inner circle throws rocks at us. To make it worse – the fire trial takes place under what looks like Flame Legion assets, which further felt wrong on a charr. Trusting Anise for such a flimsy motive is probably the dumbest thing my character has done.

When I found out we were going to Orr I assumed it was to contact the other gods (maybe it’s the closest place between Tyria and wherever they came from seeing as it is the city of the human gods) or at least to access hidden information about Balthazar in the archives, kind of like the explorable paths of Arah. That would have made a lot of sense to me. The Lazarus aspect being conveniently placed on the map as the only reason for being there was a huge wasted opportunity.

I was also disappointed to see limited Pact presence on the map. I was expecting to see some serious closure to the Zhaitan plot here with a robust representation of how the Pact cleansing of Orr is going. Overall I feel like so much more could have been done with Orr. The environment artists hit it out of the park as usual, but the lore and story of the new map left much to be desired.

I’m glad the supporting characters weren’t in it much, the story flows much better without them. One of the strengths of Season 3 is that they were used sparingly and it allowed the story to better be told by characters like Anise, Logan or Livia. I was also glad there was recognition of Caithe’s wyld hunt and our entitlement issues over the egg. We were both given a vision from a dragon champion to protect the egg, one of us decided the other was a traitor for trying to fulfill it.

Livia felt rushed and out of nowhere. It doesn’t really explain where she was during the numerous times Jennah was possibly going to die or Kryta was under serious threat. It’s a shame the entire Lazarus aspect gathering plot happens off screen only to be rushed in at the final moment. I also wish they had put some effort into recreating Livia’s actual hair rather than the weird one they went with. I also missed her old outfit. It really doesn’t look much like Livia.

How many people actually got Crystal Desert from the teaser at the end? I certainly didn’t and I’ve seen the expansion spoilers.

Shiren.9532:

How many people actually got Crystal Desert from the teaser at the end? I certainly didn’t and I’ve seen the expansion spoilers.

I got “crystalline dragon, barren wasteland, and pyramid,” with the only pyramid(ish) structures we saw in GW1 being in the Tarnished Coast or Desolation. It was enough for me to consider it a logical leap.

And I agree with you 100% on the Caithe and Livia things. Actually, to echo your thought that the story flows better without irrelevant NPCs, I think we had too much of Livia. A lot of the communicator conversations felt like comic relief just to fill a silence, and while I did chuckle once or twice, they were pretty conspicuously out of place.

Aaron Ansari.1604:

And then there’s the Shining Blade itself. Season 3 has had a trend of magical artifacts popping up everywhere without warning. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s not to my tastes, and it’s not something the franchise has done in the past. I found it a bit jarring that there was suddenly a literal blade, and the idea of Seers and mursaat killing each other with swords doesn’t sit quite right either. Minor nitpick; I only bring it up to note that there’s been a trend.

This isn’t actually new at all. In War in Kryta, we could obtain a weapon called Bartholos’ Shining Blade which used the Gothic Sword model.

The Exemplar’s Edge – aka Tier 1 Precursor for The Shining Blade – has an appearance very similar to said Gothic Sword model, and Bartholos’ Shining Blade (slightly different texture but same shape for hilt and blade).

I felt this was a nice call back to GW1 here.

Aaron Ansari.1604:

And then the books. I’m always a fan of these reading collections, but this time the abundance of continuity errors, the repeats of previous text, and the general difficulty I had accessing them brought me down drastically.

I only ever saw one continuity error and that was Queen Salma being mentioned at Divinity’s Reach’s opening. Though there do seem to be a handful of date errors around Bartholos’ retirement (literally typing 8 instead of 7 for the decades digit), which is more of a typo than continuity error.

Aaron Ansari.1604:

Why was the innermost chamber set up perfectly for bringing Lazarus back? Why did Balthazar carry an aspect of Lazarus all that way, just to leave it conveniently behind? Maybe the Eye catching up to him had something to do with it, but if so, it wasn’t communicated to us at all.

I don’t know if this is brought up in-game but I was talking with Linsey Murdock about it.

Regarding the room’s pedestals, she replied that there “wasn’t really a lore reason for it” so I guess that’s chalked up to “it looks cool”.

But regarding the aspect: Balthazar took it to Abaddon’s Reliquary for the specific purpose of locking it away. He figured that the last place anyone would look for it is in the locked vault of a dead god. Basically, he didn’t want Lazarus returning and thought that place was safe enough – and honestly, if it weren’t for the Eye of Janthir, it would have been.

Shiren.9532:

The fact that there is some magical curse on me that stops me from working against Kryta is horribly wrong, especially as a charr.

That’s not what the oath does. It merely prevents you from talking about the secrets of the Shining Blade order. It doesn’t force one to work for Kryta, nor does it prevent one from working against Kryta – they just cannot tell anyone about the groups’ secrets.

Shiren.9532:

Livia felt rushed and out of nowhere. It doesn’t really explain where she was during the numerous times Jennah was possibly going to die or Kryta was under serious threat

Livia’s lack of presence is actually explained well after we go through the Oath. She’s been hunting down the White Mantle / Lazarus for the past few years (first White Mantle, then Lazarus after his “return”).

Konig Des Todes.2086:

This isn’t actually new at all. In War in Kryta, we could obtain a weapon called Bartholos’ Shining Blade which used the Gothic Sword model.

The Exemplar’s Edge – aka Tier 1 Precursor for The Shining Blade – has an appearance very similar to said Gothic Sword model, and Bartholos’ Shining Blade (slightly different texture but same shape for hilt and blade).

I felt this was a nice call back to GW1 here.

Ah, I missed that. Teach me to pay more attention to loot, I guess.

I only ever saw one continuity error and that was Queen Salma being mentioned at Divinity’s Reach’s opening. Though there do seem to be a handful of date errors around Bartholos’ retirement (literally typing 8 instead of 7 for the decades digit), which is more of a typo than continuity error.

I caught three- the Salma one, the Bartholos one (once might be a typo, but twice is more likely a mistake), and working back from the date and age of her alleged death puts Livia at 14 years old in EotN, and 8 during the Prophecies epilogue when a Shining Blade member considered her a candidate to take over for Evennia (and commented that she’s “easier to look at.”)

And while it isn’t a continuity error per se, the personal copy of the speech on Anise’s desk, the one announcing the formal trade agreement with Lion’s Arch, had part of Livia’s speech after the Foefire tossed on at the end.

I don’t know if this is brought up in-game but I was talking with Linsey Murdock about it.

Regarding the room’s pedestals, she replied that there “wasn’t really a lore reason for it” so I guess that’s chalked up to “it looks cool”.

But regarding the aspect: Balthazar took it to Abaddon’s Reliquary for the specific purpose of locking it away. He figured that the last place anyone would look for it is in the locked vault of a dead god. Basically, he didn’t want Lazarus returning and thought that place was safe enough – and honestly, if it weren’t for the Eye of Janthir, it would have been.

That is good to know, but it’s frustrating that it’s something you had to follow up with a dev separately.

IIRC, the notes about Livia’s death and age were from White Mantle spies initially, so it would make sense that White Mantle spies at the time of her death (thus not alive when she took power) wouldn’t be aware of her actual age, and instead guess based on looks or how long they’ve known her to be around. I can easily see her age there chalked up as intentionally false, which isn’t something uncommon for Anet to do.

Especially given Livia’s long time youthful appearance.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

IIRC, the notes about Livia’s death and age were from White Mantle spies initially.

I… definitely missed that, if it was there. The book was a history of the Masters Exemplar of the Shining Blade. I’m not sure the White Mantle were even mentioned.

Luckily I took screenshots. And my mistake, it’s a book that details an attempt by White Mantle spies and Livia’s actions to remove such from the Shining Blade, ending the note about her retirement and supposed death.

Still doesn’t seem to be a book written by the Shining Blade though, so it’s still reasonable to believe that her age is falsified given Livia’s situation, and the list of other Master Exemplars was a “piece of paper placed inside” not part of the book.

Personally, I’d have to say, I did find the episode on the whole to be a bit ‘meh’ – particularly as the season finale!

I appreciate that they’ve tied off a loose end, but this whole process with Lazarus having been used for a bait-and-switch and then resurrected by his enemies to die within minutes is a bit of a disappointing conclusion to a plotline which was set up ten years ago. In the meantime, what has become the main story was purely incidental. They could have had Aurene give us the vision at the end of the previous episode, had the Shining Blade destroy the aspects offscreen, and it wouldn’t have significantly changed the story.

With that aside…

While they tried to explain it, I think it was a miss-step to have those statues of Abaddon clearly visible in the landscape of Orr. It’s a plot point that all evidence of Abaddon’s existence was hidden or destroyed, successfully enough that he was mostly forgotten for millenia. That does not fit with having giant statues towering over parts of the landscape.

They try to justify it by having the reliquary of Abaddon being an important part of the system, but I think this doesn’t really make sense for two reasons:

1) The reliquary itself might have been important, but could they not have destroyed the statues and other decorations that identify it as Abaddon’s, at least from the outside?

2) Furthermore, at the time they were destroying or hiding all signs of Abaddon, they were preparing to leave Tyria (with the possible exception of Balthazar). Why leave important objects behind on Tyria at all?

I thought Lazarus was given due attention considering he’s just kind of a slightly-more-important-than-normal Mursaat, and in GW1 their only huge advantage (not their only advantage) was that they were invisible and cast Spectral Agony.

And speaking of GW1, I feel like what they’re doing is seeing a lot of feedback from people who never played the game feeling like they’re kind of left out for not getting all these references that are suddenly thrust into the center of important plots. Maybe the story writing team is just trying to tie off those ends so they can get back to stories and characters that everyone can understand while also (albeit hastily) trying to satisfy GW1 veterans waiting for these big characters to stop floating in limbo.

But it is kind of hasty and can see where people think it’s being rushed.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Shiren.9532:

The fact that there is some magical curse on me that stops me from working against Kryta is horribly wrong, especially as a charr.

That’s not what the oath does. It merely prevents you from talking about the secrets of the Shining Blade order. It doesn’t force one to work for Kryta, nor does it prevent one from working against Kryta – they just cannot tell anyone about the groups’ secrets.

Except it does. Anise specifically says when you ask about it that it prevents you from acting against the interests of Kryta. It’s not just a seal on your ability to say something they tell you in secret, which in itself is unexplored territory. How is magic sentient enough to detect if we’ve told a lie and trigger a kill switch? That implies some kind deep meddling with our minds and that makes the whole thing far more stupid of an act for us, especially if we are members of intelligence organisations like the Whispers or Ash legion for example.

Commander: It’s just an oath of secrecy, right?
Kerida: (laugh)
Anise: There’s more to it than promising to keep our secrets. The magic involved requires igniting certain of your emotions.
Kerida: You could die.
Commander: What do I have to do? I won’t be at your beck and call. No way. Besdies, I have an important mission to complete.
Anise: You will be an agent at large. You will have special freedoms, so long as you’re not working against Kryta.

We signed ourselves over to people who we know are untrustworthy, who we know have deceived people on their own side (Anise’s deception of Logan during the Queen’s Speech as one example) and who we know are ruthless in their determination to protect Kryta above all else, something both Livia and Anise have been shown to do. In recent history the humans have destroyed their own kingdom twice using powerful artifacts, both times in opposition to the charr. Theoretically would Logan’s decision to ignore Jennah’s call for help and instead help Snaff and Glint take down Kralkatorrik be considered acting against Kryta? It’s subjective. Would working undercover for the Ash Legion with rebels in Fields of Ruin be considered acting against Kryta? What if we had to kill Krytan soldiers to maintain cover? What if Jennah forbids the Pact commander and our allies from going through the gate at Ebonhawke? What if she decides to ally with Balthazar because he is a human god?

We simply cannot justify giving this ridiculous power over our lives to the Shining Blade. It was a grave mistake on part of the writers to put the player character into this position, particularly with such flimsy motivation to do it.

My charr is a member of the Blood Legion. Can you imagine a US soldier swearing a death oath to never act against the interests of the Russians and to keep their secrets simply to find out information the Russians might have on something useful? The charr race’s relationship with the humans is still not stable and the peace talks as far as I’m aware are between the Iron Legion and the humans, not the Ash and Blood Legions. Ash and Blood Legion charr respect Iron Legion policy while in their territory but have no official treaty with the humans themselves. It’s insane that a Blood Legion charr would have sworn this oath, imagine an Ash Legion charr swearing it. That’s like a CIA agent swearing to to protect the secrets of the KGB even from the CIA and the US government. It’s ludicrous!

What if we find out something which will save Pact lives, or the lives of our guild, but in revealing the information it will compromise the Shining Blade or Kryta in some way? We won’t be able to fulfill our duty to protect our allies, as their leader we are enslaved to an organisation we have no business committing to.

How can a sylvari even guarantee the Shining Blade’s secrets won’t become a part of the Dream? How can the Shining Blade be sure how the Dream works and whether than information can be entrusted to a race with something like the Dream?

On top of all that, it’s simply bad writing for us to be joining yet another organisation when they aren’t respecting the organisations we are already members of. As a charr I’m a member of the Blood Legion, I have my own warband, I joined the Vigil and I was a founding member and commander of the Pact. We’ve also since founded our own guild, which is all but a joke at this point.

That’s all assuming the oath is only as sinister as Anise claimed it was. What if it’s an indiscriminate kill switch that gave Anise power over us and she’s free to use it whenever she wants know? What if it compromised our minds allowing Anise access to the secrets of our legions, the Pact, our guild or our order? We simply cannot trust Anise to have any kind of power over us, certainly not power we don’t fully understand.

We’ve thrown all logic out the window to fulfill someone’s fanfiction of joining the Shining Blade.

Livia and the Lazarus confrontation just felt rushed and flat. It was just….pointless. Why even bother resurrecting him? Just destroy the aspects. Lazarus was brought back to life only to be struck down. It was like…kitten man. I actually felt a bit of empathy for him. See, THATS a problem. If the writing is so bad that you have me feeling empathy for the villain then you done f-ed up.

Now, the oath. As a human PC with the chosen path for shining blade parents I didn’t mind it as much at the time. But now that I look back and have read the points of view from non-human players(mostly charr) I’m thinking, WTF are the writers doing?! Let’s see, I just took a blood oath merely because I was curious about something?! It’s like joining a cult because, “Hey all the cool kids are doing it!” The whole thing just felt like a prank by Anise and co. I used to take the Shining Blade seriously before this, now I’m not so sure.

I defended the story and writing at times, but no longer. Not anymore. The entire story just feels like bad fan service right now. It’s just incoherent. It’s a mess.

Anyone else see the blatant foreshadowing concerning Braham? They make it quite obvious that he’s going to at least try to wake Jormag up and that we will have to fight him at Jormag’s inland sea.

Now we have two Zones for Living Story Season 4(Blood Legion Homelands for the Rytlock plot thread and Jormag’s inland sea for Braham’s plot thread). The only other Zones left that could be used for Living Story Season 4 would be Tangle Root, Verdant Cascades, Abaddon’s Mouth, Domain of Winds, Deldrimor Front and Scavenger’s Causeway.

Of the 6 Zones I have no idea of which 4(if 4 is indeed the number planned for use) will be used alongside the 2 foreshadowed Zones for Season 4.

On the oath…

I can certainly understand people (especially players with charr mains) having reservations. However, I don’t think the oath is as broad as people have feared. While Anise mentions not acting against Kryta, the oath itself seems to be limited to not telling specific secrets.

And it also seems to be specific ones. Exemplar Kerida, at the end of the final instance, asks the PC not to share her secret – rather than simply informing the PC that said secret is included under the oath. That indicates that said secret is not part of the oath… while still being something I’d imagine the Shining Blade would consider to be pretty sensitive information! That indicates, to me, that there is some means of designating certain pieces of information as being for oath-takers only.

Which is probably the mechanism of how the oath ‘knows’ if it’s broken or not. A specific secret is designated as being under oath, and the magic of the oath links to that secret. If you tell the secret, the oath checks if those you’re telling it to have taken the oath. If they have, the oath-magic on the teller informs the oath-magic on the recipient that it’s protected information. If they haven’t, you die before you can spill the proverbial beans.

If my understanding is correct, than that means the only real effect on the PC is that they can’t tell the specific secret they swore the oath in order to be told. Which is now, essentially, obsolete information.

draxynnic.3719:

While Anise mentions not acting against Kryta, the oath itself seems to be limited to not telling specific secrets… If my understanding is correct, than that means the only real effect on the PC is that they can’t tell the specific secret they swore the oath in order to be told.

I’m not so sure. The rationale behind the oath, or so we’re told, is to make sure nothing like the Henge of Denravi could ever happen again. Developing magic that narrow doesn’t meet that aim- essentially, the Blade would have to go through and exhaustively designate every single little thing that might have catastrophic implications for their order as taboo- and given that Livia was freely able to show an uninitiated individual their secret headquarters, that clearly isn’t the case. It would seem much more reliable to have a magic that responds to intent, something that wouldn’t be entirely outside the known purview of mesmer capabilities.

Actually, I’d be inclined to say that it would meet the aim – or at least would be better at meeting the aim than not having the oath. Having a relatively small number of protected secrets can still mean that you might lose sensitive information at times, but the big secrets continue to be protected. Such an arrangement might, for instance, still have allowed for Markis to betray the Shining Blade, but would prevent him from leading them to the Henge if the Henge’s location was designated as a protected secret.

It would also be easier for the oath-takers to know which secrets are under oath, rather than dying because the magic of the oath decided that something was sensitive and they didn’t realise.

Having the oath sense intent could be one way around that. Nevertheless, as I noted, it appears that Exemplar Kerida’s secret does not fall under the oath, despite being a pretty significant thing. This suggests to me that the scope of the oath is not nearly as broad as some people are making it out to be.

Even under this oath we are able to bring Lazarus back to existence. If that is not a danger to Kryta as far as a spell’s wording is concerned, I don’t know what is. Or the spell itself has an intelligence of its own. The only way this would be allowed is if the spell knows that you only want to bring back the last most powerful mursaat to kill him right on the spot, and also reasonably assume that you would be capable of doing it.

Which it would not know of course, because fighting a mursaat is dependent on being a Chosen (Edit: having True Sight I mean), and the spell should definitely not know that even if its intelligent (which in itself is a ridiculous assumption).

More likely the oath is not as far-reaching or deadly as one would think. I imagine its just a cover for Anise planting some kind of bug in your mind to sense if you are starting to have treacherous thoughts.

Edit: Would have made more sense if Anise and the good Exemplar misdirect us a bit to help them fulfill their plan, needing us specifically because we are not under the spell of an overhyped murderous pinky-swear. Maybe we would get some info out of it about Balthazar, maybe not, but they needed this done, and such disregard for our own plans fits better with their “at any cost” mentality.

I think part of the issue is that they needed to persuade the Commander to hand over an aspect somehow, while also having the Commander present when Lazarus was released.

The obvious approach would be to have said right at the beginning that they were going to put the artifacts away for safekeeping. However… consider how the Commander would then react if Livia then started pulling out the aspects in order to resurrect Lazarus once the final aspect was located. Without knowing that the plan was to resurrect Lazarus simply so that he could be killed a final death, it would be reasonable for the PC to conclude that Exemplar Kerida is a traitor and attack her in order to prevent it. Which would be… bad.

Kerida seemed to think that informing the PC was unnecessary, but it’s Anise that has the greater degree of familiarity with the PC, and she made the call that the PC needed to know. Likely because she had some idea that trying to string the PC along might be… unwise.

According to one of the Shining Blade agents (Exemplar Caulden) after the ceremony, Anise thought the PC would “provide the tipping point between failure and success” in the whole plan, and she did actually string us along for that purpose. Lying is like breathing to her. So there already was some misleading here.

Which is so encouraging to hear just after saying a killer oath that weighs our lives upon giving up information that half the time might not even be true

I kind of got the impression that the oath was just some made up nonsense to scare members into keeping their lips tight. That may have been due to the lackadaisical way the dialogue was delivered though.

I suppose it would be something of a twist if the only effect of the oath was to let Anise or some other SB leader hear your thoughts, and then they would just assassinate you if they heard you betray the SB.

Probably there is no magic in oath at all. Oath may be a fraud.

Livia created the oath, so she would know if it was a fraud or not. And she and Anise could decide to break it if it wasn’t magical; after all, other Shining Blade members were not around until after we talked to Anise about it.

The oath seems clearly real, and all it does is prevent talking about Shining Blade secrets to non-Shining Blade.

There is a book, in the Shining Blade headquarters, with a list of members who died breaking the Oath.

How do you guys feel about the Shining Blade being a literal item?

Personally I love when magical artifacts are a part of a story (or just prophecied ones, they don’t even need to be legendary). Reading all the speculation into how certain weapons fit into different Prophecies in GoT and the myriad interpretations they have is part of why I like fantasy.

It’s for that reason I really disliked the way the Shining Blade (the sword) plot was implement, and Livia’s plot along with it. It feels like an asspull – something that came out of nowhere and was suddenly very important. I think it’s more important in this context because it’s the Shining Blade – an organisation we’re very familiar with from GW1 and all this nonsense about the oath and the magical sword etc might have context to exist (to prevent the Henge of Denravi incident from ever happening again) but it all happens off screen and out of nowhere. There’s no fun to legendary artifacts and prophecies if they are introduced and executed at the same time, it just feels unearned.

I’m led to believe it’s possible the Shining Blade itself was Bartholos’ blade, but that kind of diminishes it’s power in my eyes. Bartholos himself was added in EotN and wasn’t around during some of the most important Shining Blade moments (like the Henge) and we have no reason to believe there was anything special about his blade – he never says anything about it nor does it ever display magical properties. The organisation had it’s name long before this artifact supposedly existed and Bartholos himself actually goes on to found the Seraph, presumably taking his sword with him? Why would his weapon have any significance to the organisation, let alone magical properties?

The Shining Blade (the weapon) feels like a cheap plot device that cashes in on our nostalgia and not actual good writing which sets up and executes on a magical artifact or a prophecy. It might have been easier to pull off if we weren’t so closely linked to the Shining Blade in GW1 and didn’t know for a fact there was no significant sword at the time, but we do know that. The sword’s significance or power likely would have had to come in the last 250 years as the organisation reformed but my problem with that is any of that lore is nonexistent until the sword is supposed to play a role in the story.

When Livia says in the trailer “are you ready to fulfill a prophecy” I thought for sure it was one we had known prior or one that was going to be fulfilled in the upcoming expansion. I’m still not sure what prophecy we were supposed to fulfill in that episode (is it some Lazarus/Shining Blade thing from EotN I missed?).

Compare the lore vacuum around the Shining Blade (the weapon) to the lore surrounding Rurik/Rytlock’s sword. Sure in GW1 the sword itself is shown to have no power (but it does have some significance by being wielded by human royalty) but since then they’ve established a prophecy relating to it and they’ve linked a powerful magical event (the Foefire) to its use. This makes the sword and it’s twin items of interest in GW2. We can get excited about their potential uses in the story, we can speculate how they will be used (if ever) to cleanse the Foefire (and what that means). We can even speculate about who uses them (Jennah as a descendant from Doric? Samuelson as a closer descendant to the Ascalon royal line? Rytlock while summoning Barradin as a revenant?) and will it be used in a way that simply puts their souls at rest, scours them from existence or rallies them to fight as our allies against the dragons? Magdaer is better established in the lore, it has a prophecy related to it and thus its inclusion in the story is better earned and more satisfying for the audience.

The Shining Blade (the weapon) to me symbolises what’s wrong with how GW1 lore is being utilised in the ongoing story. It doesn’t feel earned and it doesn’t feel true to its roots.

As a rule, I don’t care for magic artifacts, largely due to how easy they are to handle poorly. They tend to be either overly convenient, being tailored to exactly solve an otherwise insurmountable obstacle, or overly powerful, trivializing many different obstacles. When done well, they are replaceable, only one option among several, which usually runs counter to the goal of painting this sword/ring/cloak/what-have-you as special beyond measure.

That said, while I did groan when they first revealed the Shining Blade, for the most part I could write it off because of how easily it faded into the background. The power to enforce the Oath was something Livia and her inner circle had imbued it with; in theory, they could’ve picked any pebble in the cave and accomplished the same thing. And while it is implied to have some anti-mursaat power, that was never directly addressed, saving us from having it shoved down our throats that we’d found the key to slaying an otherwise implacable foe, and right when we were learning we needed it too, gee golly! They left it sticking out of Lazarus’ chest without comment, giving space for people who were interested to speculate on what it does, and people like me to ignore it while we did the hard work of actually securing the kill.

Shiren.9532:

I’m led to believe it’s possible the Shining Blade itself was Bartholos’ blade, but that kind of diminishes it’s power in my eyes. Bartholos himself was added in EotN and wasn’t around during some of the most important Shining Blade moments (like the Henge) and we have no reason to believe there was anything special about his blade – he never says anything about it nor does it ever display magical properties. The organisation had it’s name long before this artifact supposedly existed and Bartholos himself actually goes on to found the Seraph, presumably taking his sword with him? Why would his weapon have any significance to the organisation, let alone magical properties?

Bartholos has a sword called the Shining Blade in GW1, but it’s not the same one we saw here. This one was given to the Blade by the last Seer, sometime after the War In Kryta. I really don’t like that touch- partially because it’s establishing the sword at the same time we’re using it, as you mentioned, and partially because the idea of the Seers fighting mursaat with a sword seems ludicrous given the frail, floating sorcerer thing both races had going. Maybe the Seers had their own version of jade constructs, but again, that should have been established. It’s been five years, and ArenaNet is still leaving their players to make excuses for the inconsistencies in the game’s setting.

On the whole, though, while I agree with many of your objections regarding the Blade and Livia, I see this patch as a single, unrepresentative, mishandled blip in what has otherwise impressed me. I’d argue that S3 has, on the whole, been an example of the right way to handle GW1 lore in a sequel product.

(I actually find myself agreeing that Magdaer and Sohothin were examples of artifacts done well, but that was because they initially remained background elements, not usable get-out-of-jail-free-but-not-until-the-plot-demands-it cards . ANet’s first attempt to pay off that set-up in S2 only wound up making the whole plot much more mundane. “Go find a brand-new artifact in a cookie cutter scavenger-hunt-of-multiple-parts. The swords each perform unique functions now that lets us conveniently sidestep the question of what’s happened to Magdaer. The whole rightful heir bit may have just been referring to that aforementioned new artifact and have nothing to do with descent, or then again, maybe not. The ritual itself is actually a gamey combat event followed by a single dramatic declaration.” Needless to say, I’m not looking forward to the prospect of that story thread wrapping up.)