Guild Wars 2

The facility from the fractal looks nothing like the facility in Metrica.

I was hoping the fractal would allow us to go into the walled off area to the west (with the waterfalls). Instead, it looks like a completely different place.

Did I miss anything? Lore buffs, what’s your take on this?

I suppose this part of the reactor is deep underground, much like with Crucible of Eternity. But it is a pity that it doesn’t resemble the one in Metrica Province more closely.

But it’s open… you can see the sky.

Keep in mind that it is a Fractal. It is entirely possible that the Fractal only contains a fraction of the original complex. All Fractals are pieces of land ripped from time and space, and floating on their own. It is a possibility that the Thaumanova reactor, although open to the sky above, is simply missing the tunnels that were original on top of it.

Fractals are never complete. The Urban Battleground isn’t the entire city of Ascalon either, it is a memory of a piece of it.

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

But it’s open… you can see the sky.

It could fly high above. Like platform with steam champion.

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

But it’s open… you can see the sky.

This is because it’s a Fractal.

If you actually notice in the final cinematic as Dessa is extracting you from the main reactor room, the camera pans up into the sky – there you see that the ceiling is shattered and floating. The NPCs around the original Thaumanova state the reactor was underground; and you can see in the center that only a small portion of the floor collapsed (where you jump into to reach the Champion Steam Ogre).

@Malafide: That fractal isn’t of Ascalon City – not the one we know at least. The shape doesn’t match at all. It could be any number of Ascalonian cities that existed during 1070 AE – Surmia, Drascir, Rin, Nolani, just to name a few known.

@Konig That thing that shatters isn’t the ceiling, it’s the floating upper section of the reactor. While from that particular angle it looks to cover the whole room, if you look at it before that point it’s relatively small.

Also keep in mind that nuclear-like explosions tend to change stuff quite a bit.

Yeah but they don’t typically change a large open room into a much smaller enclosed one. The opposite – maybe.

One could explain it with the simply fact that said open room collapsed and they rebuilt it slightly in order to help with cleaning operations.

Or simply the fact that the facility was bigger than just the small explorable part in the game.

Or the fact that Fractals are variants of situations not exact mirrors.

I’m inclined to go with that third option. I would note, however, that what we see in the Fractal was never supposed to be the same place as what was seen in Metrica Province. The Inquest portions of the facility are said to have been underneath the rest, which was just another asuran town.

I’d actually argue a mix of lordkrall’s second and third points.

The open world is definitely downscaled from the lore value, so dungeons and other instances – and even some in-world interiors (ever go to the Shrine of the Six and compare the windows on the insane to those on the outside? You got six inside and five outside… but light coming through them all… yeah) are typically upscaled in comparison.

So the Thaumanova city isn’t nearly as small as we see it in Metrica Province – same with everything else there. But at the same time, the fractal doesn’t appear like it’s underground because it’s a fractal.

From a different topic:

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

I found the Thaumanova Fractal disappointing for a completely different reason.

Whenever I visit the reactor today, I find myself wistfully staring into the sealed-off area to the West (with the waterfalls in). I fully expected to be able to go there when I visit the fractal.

The reactor map from the fractal is completely different from the reactor today, however, and to be honest, I have no idea how one morphed into the other. Where are the poison, water and ice chambers? Or, I don’t know, the floor? Is this really supposed to be the same facility? How?!

I imagine the facility we see in the fractal is the underground part of the open world facility. The asura building a plate on it to stop the radiation to come out makes sense. Back than the facility had no roof but afterwards they built not only one. They built the floor of the open world facility and a roof above that to contain the left over radiation. When we now stop the shield and jump into the light we would get to the fractal area but because of the dense chaos magic we will be portet instead.

I don’t know if something like this is mentioned or contradicted ingame.

Again, there’s an NPC in Metrica who says that the Inquest lab was underneath the town, which means that it was underground at the time of the fractal. I’d agree with Konig on this- the fractal just didn’t copy the roof, or any of the upper portions.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

@Malafide: That fractal isn’t of Ascalon City – not the one we know at least. The shape doesn’t match at all. It could be any number of Ascalonian cities that existed during 1070 AE – Surmia, Drascir, Rin, Nolani, just to name a few known.

I think the fractal takes place in 1080AE, the day of Foefire (Dessa says at the end that massive energy spike is incoming and leveling everywhing, and it’s definitely not The Searing, as The Great Northern Wall is already shattered, and the ground isn’t so scorched anymore)

It was outright stated by a developer that Urban Battlegrounds is a revisionment of the Searing. It is an alternate version of it. That massive energy spike is the Searing itself. There is not theorycrafting to it. It IS the Searing. Just not the Searing as we saw it in GW1.

Interview in which the mention is made.

Aaron Ansari.1604:

Again, there’s an NPC in Metrica who says that the Inquest lab was underneath the town, which means that it was underground at the time of the fractal. I’d agree with Konig on this- the fractal just didn’t copy the roof, or any of the upper portions.

Then what’s the massive UFO in the sky over the fractal? Part of the reactor core I thought? Why was that copied but not the rest of the “upstairs”?

Because Fractals are not mirrors.
Why didn’t the Searing Fractal look exactly the same as the Searing?
Why don’t the Aetherblade and Molten Alliance dungeons look exactly the same as they did during their time in the game?

As stated several times, Fractals are not exact, they are variants of certain events and in this case said variant simply didn’t have a roof.

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

Aaron Ansari.1604:

Again, there’s an NPC in Metrica who says that the Inquest lab was underneath the town, which means that it was underground at the time of the fractal. I’d agree with Konig on this- the fractal just didn’t copy the roof, or any of the upper portions.

Then what’s the massive UFO in the sky over the fractal? Part of the reactor core I thought? Why was that copied but not the rest of the “upstairs”?

Because we were specifically homing in on the events that caused the reactor to go critical. The core is part of that. The upstairs is not.

Basically a Fractal is like a memory ripped from the Mists. It contains parts of that historical event, as the Mists remember it. So the sky you see above is simply the void that surrounds the outside of each Fractal. It only copies part of the reactor, and not the entire underground tunnel that should be above it.

Alternatively, it is also possible that the Fractal takes place at the White House, which would explain the giant UFO from Independence Day hovering above it.

Actually, having just done the story again, I’m going to retract my previous reconciliation. Looking around near the top of the fractal, the architecture doesn’t look at all like it’s missing a roof- in fact, it is quite typical of the asuran architecture that is open to the sky. From an out-of-lore perspective, I’d say that the designers somehow failed to obsessively spend hours hunting down any tiny scrap of dialogue relating to the reactor- that ANet is so good at burying their lore, they hid it from themselves. In-lore… I’d say either this is part of some other part of Thauma that we don’t see in Metrica, or that fractals being fractals, the architecture got distorted when it was copied.

its probilary just canon scarlet blalblalla and anet didnt care about metrica province..

It’s possible that the section we play inside the Fractal isn’t accessible anymore in the world map.

The open world version of the Thaumanova Reactor is much smaller than the Infinite Coil Reactor, which actually replaced the Thaumanova facility. This leads to think that an important part of it is missing, perhaps cut off on the inexplorable left side of the map or totally ripped out from reality when the outburst of chaos magic happened.

After all, remember what the Asura outside today’s Thaumanova says: “When the reactor blew the world’s fabric turned inside out. Some things will never be the same.”

Indeed i was thinking that the fractal reactor has about the same size and shape (could be wrong, didnt take measurements) as the middle of the Infinite Coil, just unflooded and with a reactor in the middle instead of a portal to another part of the facility.

I dont think the reactor in Metrica is the full facility, and the area with the giant portal above is not the center of it. Its too close to the entrances. Also the major spill (where we fight the fire elemental after C.L.E.A.N.5000 goes boom) is still nowhere near this supposed center, where the reactor core went critical.

Just a heads up to everyone, where the reactor is in the fractal is where the hole you need the card to access in the world.