Guild Wars 2

First, I’m not a fan of the LS as it stands. I agree with many people that based on what we’ve been shown so far, the story makes little sense, seems to be nothing but filler, and has a villain who has rather flimsy motivations and doesn’t connect to the “main” GW2 story. However, with a few tidbits gleaned from the beginning of this chapter, I think the writers might know what they’re doing and have this planned out really well.

My first theory, which is apparently shared by many if not most people on these forums, is that the LS is nothing but sugar-coated filler with shiny attractions but no real substance, designed to maximize player presence and activity within the game and give an excuse for limited time only gem store offers. Let’s hope this isn’t the case.

My second theory, based on NPC idle chatter from the Thunder Ridge area of the “new” Kessex Peak map, is that the writers of the LS want us to feel that the whole story is wrong and doesn’t make sense from a lore pespective.

Mykala: I never thought I’d see the day when the Nightmare Court would form an alliance.
Senna: I doubt it’s truly an alliance. If I were to guess—and I am—I’d say the court is pulling the strings.
Mykala: An interesting choice of words. That’s what they said about the Flame Legion and the dredge.

In my opinion, these “alliances” that were set up by Scarlet serve two purposes: first, they give her the resources (magitechnology, spores) she needs to fulfill her goals (see below), and second, to create discord and chaos, which is apparently her main motivation. She doesn’t intend for them to last, she’s just playing factions against each other under the guise of uniting under a common cause. The Molten Alliance was not very stable, as instanced by the dead drop reports from Flame and Frost. They really don’t trust each other at all, and it was simply a marriage of convenience to ensure mutual survival instead of mutual destruction in the wake of a massive civil war and the death of a leader/“god.” As an analogy, consider America and the Soviet Union in World War 2: they joined together to survive the Axis onslaught, but we only saw the end of the Cold War about 20 years ago.

Here, we have the Nightmare Court, who generally go it alone but have formed tenuous alliances in the past (see Vandal’s Claim in Brisban Wildlands), and the krait, who have NEVER in the known history of Tyria EVER been anything but hostile to non-krait. If the dredge and Flame Legion are xenophobic, the krait are worse than both of them combined. I have little doubt that the Court is using the krait for their own purposes and will dispose of them afterwards, and the krait likewise consider the Court their pawns and that after their usefulness runs out, the knives will come out (literally and figuratively) and they’ll use them as slaves and/or sacrifices. Unlike the Flame Legion and dredge, the Nightmare Court and krait aren’t necessarily in a desperate position, they just have a lot to gain from their alliance.

So we have makeshift alliances that are almost certain to collapse sooner or later (probably sooner). In my opinion, they were never designed to last long, just long enough for Scarlet to profit from them by freaking everyone out, turning factions against themselves and each other, and gaining some resource to use in the future. Note that even the NPCs are concerned that the alliances probably shouldn’t exist in the first place, and they’re making very reasonable assumptions that the factions will probably tear themselves apart in the near future. When in-game characters are lore- or genre-savvy, that should tell you something is up. In my opinion, this attention to how weird things are getting is not mere coincidence, and I very much hope that this means the LS writers are (seemingly) butchering the lore on purpose. The developers want us to know how messed-up the Molten and Toxic Alliances are from a lore perspective. They want us to feel how WRONG this all is, and how it shouldn’t happen and seemingly couldn’t have happened until now.

So in other words, my second theory is that the writers do know exactly what they’re doing, and they have everything figured out perfectly. The story has revolved around Scarlet, but so far we don’t know much about her motivations, goals, or even methods. From what we know, Scarlet’s main objective is to change everything possible. She wants to destroy the status quo (and perhaps even prevent there from BEING a status quo) and sow chaos everywhere she can. It goes beyond just taking delight in messing with people. She has a modus operandi that involves putting opposites together, as demonstrated by the Molten and Toxic Alliances and her pairing of Slick and Sparki in the Aetherpath. Moreover, she was essentially willing to sacrifice a whole airship facility simply to let Caithe know that she (Scarlet) knows way more than she ought to. She clearly has something in mind, we just don’t know what. All of this randomness and insanity has some plan behind it, and she’s using anyone and everyone she can get her hands on to shake things up. What that plan is remains to be seen, and it’s REALLY frustrating that Arenanet keeps dragging things on like this, but I feel that the writers have some grand scheme that will fall into place after all the requisite pieces have been introduced. It’s like a heist movie where the criminals steal a bunch of strange things in order to use them in pulling of some master plan without anyone guessing what they were ultimately up to. So as infuriating as it is, I think that eventually we’ll see a LS update where everything falls into place and the LS writers will prove their brilliance, and we’ll all look like idiots for complaining the whole time, but until then we’re going to have to deal with a slow-paced story. We’re still in the “get what’s needed for the heist” phase, and it might drag on for quite a while.

(While we’re at it, I’ll just throw out my two cents and guess that she’s tied to Mordremoth the jungle dragon somehow. The objectives of each dragon are reflected by their nature: Zhaitan, being the undead dragon, wants to corrupt all life and replace it with undeath to serve him; Jormag the ice dragon values strength and power, just as ice is extremely tough when you get enough of it laid in one place; Primordus the lava dragon, like a volcano, seeks to explosively spread its fiery nature wherever it can and replace life with lava-like elemental creatures; and Kralkatorrik, like the crystals it represents, wants to replace the disorder of the world with crystalline order and perfection. If that’s what they’re supposed to represent, then Mordremoth represents the jungle, a place of wild growth. If he’s acting through or with Scarlet, a sentient plant, then maybe their goal is to choke out civilization with chaos and “improve” things no matter what the cost, “growing” at the expense of everything else. Not really founded in anything concrete, just speculation.)

(Oh, and not to brag but I predicted the plot of Guild Wars 1: Nightfall a while before it came out, speculating that it was going to involve a fallen god and his/her “angels.” But that doesn’t mean that my predictions here are correct)

Also, about Scarlet’s motivations: either she’s a terrorist and is really, really stupid, or this HAS to be part of something bigger, and the chaos is just a side effect, because she knows that terrorism doesn’t work and can’t be an end unto itself. For further reading, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWbtN1mwgkU

I didn’t read this in full, but I’d like to note one thing: Scarlet’s motivation.

We actually have it, at least part of it.

“But I see the flaws in that design. My people don’t have to take what we’re given, or be what we were “born to be.” No people do. We can change the rules…well, I can. And I’m going to.”

Her intention is to remove the concept of predetermination (aka Wyld Hunts). Her attacks on Queen’s Jubilee are unrelated to this, as stated in this interview and were actually just done on a whim.

So in a way, she does create chaos for the sake of creating chaos. That’s what she did with the Jubilee. And she isn’t so much “really, really stupid” but rather just that insane. Her act of “seeing the Eternal Alchemy” was false – the device she was strapped to was a sensory deprivation device. In other words, she just lost all sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. That typically sends people insane and Scarlet is no exception. She hallucinated, but was told she’d see the Eternal Alchemy (a placebo at best) so she believes she saw the Eternal Alchemy.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

I didn’t read this in full, but I’d like to note one thing: Scarlet’s motivation.

We actually have it, at least part of it.

“But I see the flaws in that design. My people don’t have to take what we’re given, or be what we were “born to be.” No people do. We can change the rules…well, I can. And I’m going to.”

Her intention is to remove the concept of predetermination (aka Wyld Hunts). Her attacks on Queen’s Jubilee are unrelated to this, as stated in this interview and were actually just done on a whim.

So in a way, she does create chaos for the sake of creating chaos. That’s what she did with the Jubilee. And she isn’t so much “really, really stupid” but rather just that insane. Her act of “seeing the Eternal Alchemy” was false – the device she was strapped to was a sensory deprivation device. In other words, she just lost all sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. That typically sends people insane and Scarlet is no exception. She hallucinated, but was told she’d see the Eternal Alchemy (a placebo at best) so she believes she saw the Eternal Alchemy.

I get all that, but in the end, isn’t spreading chaos ending predetermination? Predetermined events are set in stone, and she’s trying to change that. It also seems as though it’s not limited to just Wyld Hunts, as she’s messing with the entire continent, not just the Tarnished Coast (or specifically the Grove). She HAS to be part of something larger than just the fate of the Sylvari, or otherwise what’s the point of everything she’s done so far? “Changing the rules” seems to involve the rules we’re accustomed to here in Tyria. In the very podcast you cited, it was stated that “she has an agenda, but overall her goal is to shake things up as much as possible,” and later, “she’s trying to change the way the world works.” Breaking the tradition of the Wyld Hunt giving purpose to the Sylvari is only one facet of that, and perhaps the one that she identifies with most, but I can’t see how that would be her ONLY goal. Her experiences in the sensory deprivation chamber changed her, but we’ve only seen one facet of that episode. We don’t know the full story, we don’t know her ultimate goals and exactly what she intends to do to get there, we don’t know what she knows, and we don’t know how real her visions truly were, or whether they can be attributed to something other than just sensory deprivation. It’s like Moto’s story from the Super Adventure Box—we have a limited perspective in the short stories, and we only see what we’re intended to see.

Part of it is also the fact that I refuse to believe that the LS writers really would limit themselves to a cartoony villain like Scarlet as she’s appeared thus far. Maybe it’s true that that’s her only purpose, in which case Arenanet should no longer be taken seriously as a company. But I have faith in the writers to bring this all together and show that Scarlet is only a small part of what’s really going on, and that everything that’s happened so far in the LS is not only interconnected, but in a way that makes perfect sense and showcases their talent in creating a compelling storyline. There HAS to be more (and much more) to Scarlet than what we’ve seen so far, or the game is doomed.

Addendum: [paraphrase] “We don’t know if she actually traveled somewhere or if she was just hallucinating…it remains to be seen how much of what she saw is real.” We can’t conclusively say that she’s 100% crazy and that none of what she saw was grounded in reality. Certainly she IS insane and enjoys making people suffer, but there’s simply not enough evidence that it ends there.

Just to restate, my main thesis here is that the devs DO know what they’re doing, and that the apparent butchery of the lore will be reconciled in a very interesting, unexpected, and fulfilling way down the road (I hope). The new NPC dialogue in Kessex seems to be a sign that we’re supposed to be leery of all the seeming inconsistencies we’ve witnessed so far, because if the in-game characters are speculating in that manner, we ought to take note of it.

With her motivations, I was referring to this line:

In my opinion, these “alliances” that were set up by Scarlet serve two purposes: first, they give her the resources (magitechnology, spores) she needs to fulfill her goals (see below), and second, to create discord and chaos, which is apparently her main motivation.

I was clarifying what her main motivation is, and that chaos is just a side-effect or actions she does on a whim. She doesn’t – or at least shouldn’t – need chaos to end predetermination in the manner she’s trying to end them. It sounds more like she’s trying to remove the Dream and the Nightmare, since they are what creates that pre-determination. Or remove sylvari from being connected to them.

To your quote – Scott says elsewhere that “she didn’t see what she thought she saw” and explained the nature of the machine, and that said machine is what drove her insane. (Side note: how can you call someone insane, but not crazy? o.O Don’t they mean the same thing, effectively? Same with ‘mad.’)

As to your stated main point in said last post – they do know what they’re doing, for sure – as in they know their actions. As far as plotting out goes. But the question is whether or not they know what they’re doing as in their actions’ effects on the lore. Or why their actions (mainly their terrible habit of having no exposition) is negatively effecting the story.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

With her motivations, I was referring to this line:

In my opinion, these “alliances” that were set up by Scarlet serve two purposes: first, they give her the resources (magitechnology, spores) she needs to fulfill her goals (see below), and second, to create discord and chaos, which is apparently her main motivation.

I was clarifying what her main motivation is, and that chaos is just a side-effect or actions she does on a whim. She doesn’t – or at least shouldn’t – need chaos to end predetermination in the manner she’s trying to end them. It sounds more like she’s trying to remove the Dream and the Nightmare, since they are what creates that pre-determination. Or remove sylvari from being connected to them.

No offense, but this seems way too limited. What about those other quotes from the interview? The devs are making it sound like her plans do include the Dream/Nightmare, but that it goes way beyond that.

To your quote – Scott says elsewhere that “she didn’t see what she thought she saw” and explained the nature of the machine, and that said machine is what drove her insane.

But we still don’t have enough information about Scarlet to make a thorough determination either way. “Didn’t see what she thought she saw” and “the machine drove her insane” don’t necessarily mean that she was deprived of sensation and had some weird experiences that made her do some rather major things. Maybe she didn’t see the Eternal Alchemy, she saw some vision brought about by Mordremoth or another Pale Tree (because others have to exist), or somehow connected briefly to another dimension (possibly the source of her powers, she might have found a way to tap into an alternate reality somehow). And just because the machine drove her insane doesn’t mean that the physical sensory deprivation it brought about was the literal cause of her new ideology. That would be like saying “Islam was founded because Muhammad went into some caves.” Literally speaking, yes, the physical act of going into a cave to meditate led to the founding of Islam. But the religion was founded because of what Muhammad experienced during his meditations; according to Muslim doctrine, he received the word of God. Who’s to say the same thing isn’t the case here? You could just dismiss Scarlet as a mind-trip gone bad, or you could consider that maybe there was some truth to what she saw, even if it wasn’t what she thought it was. Ancient people saw dinosaur skeletons and made up stories about dragons, so maybe Scarlet, as intelligent as she is, saw something she couldn’t comprehend and is merely referring to it according to concepts she does understand? I don’t see why the devs would go into so much detail in all of this backstory if it weren’t significant in some way. I refuse to believe that they would create nothing but a throwaway plot and a throwaway character just to kill time; surely this has to tie into something bigger.

As to your stated main point in said last post – they do know what they’re doing, for sure – as in they know their actions. As far as plotting out goes. But the question is whether or not they know what they’re doing as in their actions’ effects on the lore. Or why their actions (mainly their terrible habit of having no exposition) is negatively effecting the story.

So what if some indeterminate period from now, they come up with a perfectly lore-friendly solution to all of these apparent discrepancies that correlates exactly with established GW lore? What if we finally discover exactly what Scarlet is after, and precisely how she was able to form these alliances, and how currently unknown details that are lore-accurate led to situations that we currently consider lore-unfriendly? What if when the big finale hits we all look like idiots for complaining about the story up to the point we’re currently at? Sort of like a film where all sorts of seemingly supernatural occurrences can be attributed to some person using special effects behind the scenes to manipulate the protagonist(s). It makes no sense when you see it, but at the very end it comes together and there’s a perfectly rational explanation. At this point we’re still in the “supernatural occurrences” phase, and my fervent hope is that there WILL be a big reveal in the end that the antagonist was using special effects all along.