Guild Wars 2

Well, one possibility could be that this is the first hint of what could be the main issue for the next expansion. We seem to have had two dragons put on a bus, Kralkatorrik hasn’t done much since the Dragonrise, and the DSD is still not directly affecting Tyria – it’s an appropriate setup to put the dragons aside and focus on something else. Balthazar falling, in whatever sense, is probably a sign of some major upheaval – the focus of the next expansion could be the upheaval itself, possibly an interplanetary threat.

I believe it was Menzies who overthrew Balthazar and took his powers.
That’s why Menzies Shadow army was invading the FoW back in GW1.

Balthazar may have disguised his form incase Menzies sent a demon out to kill him (Since Badazar was greatly weakened).

Also, we still have no knowledge of the consequence of the war since participating in the FoW.
Arenanet may be leading Balthazar’s story to be resolved in a FoW raid. (Deimos is a shadow demon from Menzies most probably, which may be a clue that could veer us into this direction for a raid).

It would be great to learn more about Balthazar’s father, and why he killed(???) him.

Also side note,
Maybe it was Menzies (if he gained Divinity) that Rytlock saw in the mists that blinded him. The mark on his blindfold is similar to the one engraved on the chest of Deimos.

Ogwom.7940:

Also side note,
Maybe it was Menzies (if he gained Divinity) that Rytlock saw in the mists that blinded him. The mark on his blindfold is similar to the one engraved on the chest of Deimos.

Too bad hes not blind. It was already explained..

“A revenant’s signature blindfold isn’t mandatory, either, as revenants don’t become blind as a natural result of their profession. Most of them only wear a blindfold as a tool to help them commune with the legends, who are able to perceive the world through their own senses.”

Pretty sure he talked about it ingame in HOT story.

Burtnik.5218:

Ogwom.7940:

Also side note,
Maybe it was Menzies (if he gained Divinity) that Rytlock saw in the mists that blinded him. The mark on his blindfold is similar to the one engraved on the chest of Deimos.

Too bad hes not blind. It was already explained..

“A revenant’s signature blindfold isn’t mandatory, either, as revenants don’t become blind as a natural result of their profession. Most of them only wear a blindfold as a tool to help them commune with the legends, who are able to perceive the world through their own senses.”

Pretty sure he talked about it ingame in HOT story.

Ah okay, thanks for the clarification.

I thought it was just Rytlock who was blind somehow.

Ogwom.7940:

Burtnik.5218:

Ogwom.7940:

Also side note,
Maybe it was Menzies (if he gained Divinity) that Rytlock saw in the mists that blinded him. The mark on his blindfold is similar to the one engraved on the chest of Deimos.

Too bad hes not blind. It was already explained..

“A revenant’s signature blindfold isn’t mandatory, either, as revenants don’t become blind as a natural result of their profession. Most of them only wear a blindfold as a tool to help them commune with the legends, who are able to perceive the world through their own senses.”

Pretty sure he talked about it ingame in HOT story.

Ah okay, thanks for the clarification.

I thought it was just Rytlock who was blind somehow.

At the moment, it’s not clear. We know from the post that not all revs are blind, but we don’t know the specific situation with Rytlock. He seems too… pragmatic, and self-reliant, to cover his eyes and rely on another entity’s senses if he could just do the seeing for himself.

Aaron Ansari.1604:

At the moment, it’s not clear. We know from the post that not all revs are blind, but we don’t know the specific situation with Rytlock. He seems too… pragmatic, and self-reliant, to cover his eyes and rely on another entity’s senses if he could just do the seeing for himself.

He has 4 ears and a snout with probably the best sense of smell of all intelligent races. I think charr are well covered on the non-visual sense front generally.

Sure, but that’s not much help in a noisy, fragrant, foreign environment like the Magus Falls.

WinterTwister.7046:

Why do people in this thread think we soloed Balthazar..?
We fought his hounds. Balthazar never fought us. The player character, after fighting the hounds, told Balth to stop what he was doing and fight us.

You’re forgetting about when we fought him after unveiling his illusion in the first instance.

That’s what most people refer to, I believe, when he tried to kill Marjory but couldn’t (despite instantly killing dozens of White Mantle at the end of episode 1).

But, as has been established, Balthazar’s weakened in that point of time. As he himself admits later.

He could kill them instantly because he just absorbed the bloodstone’s magic. Now he couldn’t, he even said in the instance “leave no one alive, this tires me”.

Given the tone, I’m sure that is using the phrase as in it’s beginning to bore him. Not that he’s exhausted from the very brief fight.

And I would find it unlikely that magic he absorbed would so easily deplete itself so that he’d be incapable of performing the same act months later. TBH, it’s more likely that he didn’t actually intend to kill Marjory but wanted to send a message of “don’t mess with me anymore.”

Nick.6972:

It gets better. Apparently, the fact that we barely took down a weakened human god in GW1 – Abaddon, doesn’t matter anymore. Screw that. Out heroes are capable of soloing Balthazar. Wonderful continuity.

except we are not soloing balthazar but his hounds while he is too busy draining dragons to care about us more than calling out the hounds and throw some threats when we kill them.

and we are not really soloing them either as we are creating of shoots of dragonic energies to corrupt those hounds for them to be even able to die in the first place….

wonderfull levels of paying attention to what is going on

EDIT:

You’re forgetting about when we fought him after unveiling his illusion in the first instance.

I’d hardly call breakign that illusion as “soloing” anything as we have kas-jory, taimi, dragon minions and security golems aiding – and then once the ilusion itself is broken he just abandons it throws a speech grabs device and tell the henchmen to do the work for him and bails out anyway – which means no direct confrontation here either

so the statements of us suddenly soloing balthazar still do not hold any groudn really

Lord Trejgon.2809

except we are not soloing balthazar but his hounds while he is too busy draining dragons to care about us more than calling out the hounds and throw some threats when we kill them.

He was not busy. He was on the brink of death. When he heard the human Elementalist shout “Feel the Flames of Balthazar”, he almost died. Of laugh!

I wonder if the Priests of Balthazar will continue to bless us with “May Balthazar strengthen you” now, after we raised our weapons against their God.

These small “issues” makes me wonder if the initial lore team (or lore writer) was replaced. Because, it is evident that nobody on the lore team took into consideration how hilarious is to threaten Balthazar with the fire he gave to us :-)

Cristalyan.5728:

Lord Trejgon.2809

except we are not soloing balthazar but his hounds while he is too busy draining dragons to care about us more than calling out the hounds and throw some threats when we kill them.

He was not busy. He was on the brink of death. When he heard the human Elementalist shout “Feel the Flames of Balthazar”, he almost died. Of laugh!

I wonder if the Priests of Balthazar will continue to bless us with “May Balthazar strengthen you” now, after we raised our weapons against their God.

These small “issues” makes me wonder if the initial lore team (or lore writer) was replaced. Because, it is evident that nobody on the lore team took into consideration how hilarious is to threaten Balthazar with the fire he gave to us :-)

Well, NPC merchants in the new zone still say “May Balthazar strengthen you”, but I wonder to what extent outsiders know what’s going on in the Dr.Mons

Or summoning the hounds of Balthazar to kill the hounds of Balthazar. That must have been confusing for the poor puppies.

I’m planning to do exactly that with my Mesmer (and using chronoshift to boot) for the pure irony of it all.

Cristalyan.5728:

These small “issues” makes me wonder if the initial lore team (or lore writer) was replaced. Because, it is evident that nobody on the lore team took into consideration how hilarious is to threaten Balthazar with the fire he gave to us :-)

Jeff Grubb’s left the team, and I don’t think many people, if any, that worked on the original lore from Prophecies are left. Ree… I honestly don’t know if she’s still around. I haven’t seen anything to indicate she’s left, but I don’t think I’ve seen or heard anything of her since before HoT released.

Lord Trejgon.2809:

EDIT:

You’re forgetting about when we fought him after unveiling his illusion in the first instance.

I’d hardly call breakign that illusion as “soloing” anything as we have kas-jory, taimi, dragon minions and security golems aiding – and then once the ilusion itself is broken he just abandons it throws a speech grabs device and tell the henchmen to do the work for him and bails out anyway – which means no direct confrontation here either

so the statements of us suddenly soloing balthazar still do not hold any groudn really

I don’t know why you’re quoting me about the OP’s comment of “soloing a god”.

Because I never said we solo’d a god. In that instance you quoted me, I was correcting a person who claimed we never fought Balthazar directly. We certainly did, and we had three allies at first followed by an army of asura and golems.

I also stated, in earlier posts as well as the one you partially quoted, that Balthazar was no longer of god-like levels, as that is a plot point from start to finish.

Cristalyan.5728:

These small “issues” makes me wonder if the initial lore team (or lore writer) was replaced. Because, it is evident that nobody on the lore team took into consideration how hilarious is to threaten Balthazar with the fire he gave to us :-)

The “narrative continuity” developers from GW1 (Ree Soesbee and Jeff Grubbs) had stopped being in the spotlight since GW2 released; Jeff Grubbs even left quite some time ago. Ree, I believe, still works at ArenaNet but we haven’t heard anything about what she’s doing there since 2013.

The lead writer, Bobby Stein, had been with the company since Prophecies I believe, and IIRC the main writers of Prophecies and Factions plots/lore left before/during Nightfall, and the current “narrative continuity” developers (Angel McCoy and Scott McGough) had been in position since Season 1 (take that as you will for their quality).

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Lord Trejgon.2809:

EDIT:

You’re forgetting about when we fought him after unveiling his illusion in the first instance.

I’d hardly call breakign that illusion as “soloing” anything as we have kas-jory, taimi, dragon minions and security golems aiding – and then once the ilusion itself is broken he just abandons it throws a speech grabs device and tell the henchmen to do the work for him and bails out anyway – which means no direct confrontation here either

so the statements of us suddenly soloing balthazar still do not hold any groudn really

I don’t know why you’re quoting me about the OP’s comment of “soloing a god”.

Because I never said we solo’d a god. In that instance you quoted me, I was correcting a person who claimed we never fought Balthazar directly. We certainly did, and we had three allies at first followed by an army of asura and golems.

I also stated, in earlier posts as well as the one you partially quoted, that Balthazar was no longer of god-like levels, as that is a plot point from start to finish.

well I quoted this because it was in chain of comments that seemed to sparkle of the statement that we soloed him with no effort – namely – as I was seeing it on the point of writign down that edit you were answering to a guy who have responed to the claim of us soloing balthazar like it was nothing with a claim that we didn’t even fought him directly – hence given the context I assumed you following that specific thread while trying to debunk the debunk of the claim – seems like assumption was not entirely correct

the directness of that encounter though may be questioned though – I have seen someone claiming that disguised balthasar never attacked the player himself – only enchanted mirrors, and while I recall him actually following my all the time I do not recall seeign much of factuall attackes aimed at me originating from him – the offspawned ilusions were spammign attacks all aroudn by I do not recall seeing him attacking directly even once during that part.

later on though once mirrors are repaired we do indeed attack him/his illusion directly and frankly there was way too much going on for me to keep track of which AoE was casted by whom really xD and honestly I think this would be closest to direct confrontation we got indeed – one could argue though on how fighting from under illusion was affecting combat capabilities of an god-like entity.

but after ilusion is dropped he does no longer direct any attack at us – apart from “you die first shadow” aimed at marjory – which she apparently survived despite of his intention toward her. this should be imo clear sign that he was not operating at his proper “power levels” so to speak indeed