Not going to lie, the Six gods pantheon is one of my least favorite fictional pantheons out there. Gods in a story should evoke feelings of awe, terror, and mystery. Most importantly, they should have a legendary record for success, making them as a power worthy of worship. The Six fail in regard to all of these, coming across as an utterly underwhelming sack of disappointment. (Although I will usually highlight Grenth as being a bit of an exception to this, especially considering his unique origin.) Anyway, seeing as how Balthazar has now become an active agent in the story, I must say that I am feeling nothing short of elated. Because I want to kill him. I really, really, REALLY want to kill this guy. I am shaking in my seat eager to slap his kitten. This is the only thing that could be more satisfying than killing Phlunt. Of course, he just had to poof away at the end leaving me unsatisfied. Good gosh, I hope we get to kill him soon.
DOES ANYONE ELSE HAVE A RAGING CHARR kitten FOR DEICIDE RIGHT NOW???
COME BACK BALTHAZAR! I JUST WANT TO PUT MY SWORD IN YOU!!!
In GW1, the lore of the gods definitely did “evoke feelings of awe, terror, and mystery”. GW2 has made them suffer by diminishing them a bit, as making all human history and their gods less significant was ArenaNet’s answer to making the story multi-racial rather than human centric, when what they should have done instead was adapt the other races to give them a different perspective without reducing importance.
Balthazar is one of the more awe and terror invoking gods from GW1 lore, just under Grenth, Dhuum, and Abaddon.
Dear ANet writers,
Stop treating GW2 as a single story. Each Season and expansion should be their own story.
In GW1, the lore of the gods definitely did “evoke feelings of awe, terror, and mystery”. GW2 has made them suffer by diminishing them a bit, as making all human history and their gods less significant was ArenaNet’s answer to making the story multi-racial rather than human centric, when what they should have done instead was adapt the other races to give them a different perspective without reducing importance.
Balthazar is one of the more awe and terror invoking gods from GW1 lore, just under Grenth, Dhuum, and Abaddon.
Well, I have read up plenty of Guild Wars story and lore, but I have never played the game. This means that I have knowledge, but also detachment. Since what I’m talking about is pure feelings, that detachment does certainly skew my perspective.
In GW1, the lore of the gods definitely did “evoke feelings of awe, terror, and mystery”. GW2 has made them suffer by diminishing them a bit, as making all human history and their gods less significant was ArenaNet’s answer to making the story multi-racial rather than human centric, when what they should have done instead was adapt the other races to give them a different perspective without reducing importance.
Balthazar is one of the more awe and terror invoking gods from GW1 lore, just under Grenth, Dhuum, and Abaddon.
Agreed fully. The six human gods aren’t really properly depicted in GW2.
The GW1 gods felt really powerful and awe inspiring. The GW2 route of making everything human “less” for the sake of “diversity” was a mistake in my opinion.
If here they fall they shall live on when ever you cry “For Ascalon!”
I’m kinda in between. The Six, the actual Six always did feel a bit lackluster to me. Maybe in part because there is only six of them (five at first too). Whatever it is/was about them that made me view them this way doesn’t extend to Abaddon and Dhuum. The two evil gods actually did manage to create a kind of awe in my opinion, which is weird since its only these two that we actually get to see, and one of them we kill.
The way I see it, he will end up as nothing more as either:
a) being stripped from power and trying to regain it (personal need)
b) an anti-hero who tries to bring back power to the gods (indicated by the help of Lyssa?)
c) not Balthazar?
Anyway. We lack info. So far, he just kittened things up for usand that’s just annoying for me personaly.
“At birth, I was blessed by Balthazaar”. I uh, guess he changed his mind.
Yeah, I kinda had that issue too. Anet really didn’t think this crap though.
What does being blessed by Balthazar matter? Religious people say you are blessed by god, but it doesn’t make true. Given the fact that the gods actively stopped communicating with humans, this would make it doubly true. You cannot be blessed by someone who hasn’t been around for centuries nor does it matter since in gw lore gods have been known to be removed.
You already seem to be operating from a dislike of the story and will find anything to complain about it. The problem this isn’t a good point to be contentious with.
As u know im pro. ~Tomonobu Itagaki
This is an mmo forum, if someone isn’t whining chances are the game is dead.
I’d say it is a good point. If one of the five choices ANet gives you to flesh out your character is to feel like you have a personal connection with Balthazar, and then when Balthazar enters the story, your character is as quick as anyone else to condemn him, that’s rolling back personalization that they offered you.
R.I.P., Old Man of Auld Red Wharf. Gone but never forgotten.
If I want to deal with that much anti-theistic edgelordiness I’ll hang out in the YouTube comments section of heavy metal videos.
Well you’re no fun.
A friggin’ god just built up potentially fatal levels of bad karma in a world featuring explosive-wielding heavy-metal death-cats, and somehow you find room to complain. Personally, I’m feeling like
If I want to deal with that much anti-theistic edgelordiness I’ll hang out in the YouTube comments section of heavy metal videos.
Well you’re no fun.
A friggin’ god just built up potentially fatal levels of bad karma in a world featuring explosive-wielding heavy-metal death-cats, and somehow you find room to complain. Personally, I’m feeling like
Sorry that my idea of fun doesn’t involve an entire race taking a hot steaming crap on people who believe differently than they do and that happens to resemble/reflect the sad behaviors of keyboard warriors in the real world but hey, you do you.
Playing GW2 for the story is like expecting plot in a porno. You’ll be left disappointed.
Sorry that my idea of fun doesn’t involve an entire race taking a hot steaming crap on people who believe differently than they do and that happens to resemble/reflect the sad behaviors of keyboard warriors in the real world but hey, you do you.
Unfairly chastising someone’s beliefs from the secure position of distance and anonymity is sad. Successfully ka-sploding your enemies who were aided by a higher power while forgoing any such aid yourself is maximum brutal.
“At birth, I was blessed by Balthazaar”. I uh, guess he changed his mind.
My favorite part is talking to the human npcs in DM. They’re like, “Wow. So we’re chasing Balthazar now?”, and right when you walk away they say one of this default farewells, “May Balthazar strengthen you.”
In GW1, the lore of the gods definitely did “evoke feelings of awe, terror, and mystery”. GW2 has made them suffer by diminishing them a bit, as making all human history and their gods less significant was ArenaNet’s answer to making the story multi-racial rather than human centric, when what they should have done instead was adapt the other races to give them a different perspective without reducing importance.
Balthazar is one of the more awe and terror invoking gods from GW1 lore, just under Grenth, Dhuum, and Abaddon.
Pretty much this, and I guarantee that “reading up on it” is no substitute for actually playing here.
It’s worth reinforcing that ArenaNet deliberately downplayed the gods in GW2, in order to ensure the spotlight gets shared among all the races. In my opinion, they grossly overshot – it’s basically been the atheistic/agnostic races that have had the answers 90% of the time, while the gods and animal spirits got the occasional cameo at most. And if they have just thrown Balthazar in to be the monster of the season just for the sake of having a shocking twist, then that’s just twisting the proverbial knife.
To those who think Scarlet hate means she’s succeeded as a villain:
People don’t hate Scarlet like Game of Thrones fans hate Joffrey.
They hate her the way Star Wars fans hate Jar Jar Binks.
I think the only mistake this time was to involve the human gods again. Everything was going fine without the need to AGAIN rely on GW1 reference (Almost fanservice, IMO). Lazarus was already a little forced to begin with, then he suddenly turns to be another old character with even less reason to be there?
“Only problem with the Engineer is
that it makes every other class in the game boring to play.”
Hawks
Sorry that my idea of fun doesn’t involve an entire race taking a hot steaming crap on people who believe differently than they do and that happens to resemble/reflect the sad behaviors of keyboard warriors in the real world but hey, you do you.
Unfairly chastising someone’s beliefs from the secure position of distance and anonymity is sad. Successfully ka-sploding your enemies who were aided by a higher power while forgoing any such aid yourself is maximum brutal.
Actually, all the Charr have done is do the former, the Humans killed the Charr “gods”.
Beyond that I am pretty miffed at this point. This is one of the most tired and unoriginal cliche’s in fantasy, and it always gets treated like it’s some kind of clever or interesting idea, when in reality it has been done a billion times and it only gets worse every-time someone retreads this ground. I was just forced to come back to this game, and I would already rather shoot myself than see where they want to go from here because I am almost certain I know where this is going, down the toilet.
In short if Balthezar has lost his power due to the dragons, or just randomly done a heel face, Anet really needs to hire new writers, if not and they do something interesting like a war of the gods arc maybe, just maybe this might be salvageable. But I am not holding my breath.
Sorry that my idea of fun doesn’t involve an entire race taking a hot steaming crap on people who believe differently than they do and that happens to resemble/reflect the sad behaviors of keyboard warriors in the real world but hey, you do you.
Unfairly chastising someone’s beliefs from the secure position of distance and anonymity is sad. Successfully ka-sploding your enemies who were aided by a higher power while forgoing any such aid yourself is maximum brutal.
Actually, all the Charr have done is do the former, the Humans killed the Charr “gods”.
There’s a certain degree to which charr history is propaganda. Claiming that they killed their gods rather than admitting it was humans is part of it. Another part is their vilification of significant human characters of the time when their own leaders are raised as heroes, when from an objective perspective, the things the charr leaders did at the time are worse than anything Rurik, Gwen, or arguably even Adelbern did.
That said, charr society has matured a lot since then, and there may be a time in the future that they admit the truth. In the meantime, the charr view of history is simply the charr view of history – the official history of the Guild Wars 1 period is what we saw in-game.
To those who think Scarlet hate means she’s succeeded as a villain:
People don’t hate Scarlet like Game of Thrones fans hate Joffrey.
They hate her the way Star Wars fans hate Jar Jar Binks.
