Guild Wars 2

Perhaps “nothing is sacred” applied to characters more than places. And how would it change the face of Tyria if all of the sudden players knew that key, likable, NPC characters weren’t fixed parts of the world?

I think that Anet has been making Kasmeer and Taimi way too likable as of late. And they are also trying to draw on player sympathies with different personal tragedies for each character.

You see this in movies all the time. Support characters that have overcome something out of the ordinary and who go out of their way to be endearing with every appearance end up being spectacularly killed in order to stoke that emotional investment the audience has. Then each new character that comes along has that added mystique. We know now they can die, so all the moments of suspense are just a little more suspenseful. Out of the three new characters, which one will make it to the end?

So I fully expect either Kasmeer or Taimi to be Scarlet’s final victim at the end of the finale. Maybe it will even be player choice. Similar to the the election. Players have a week to choose the left path or the right, the choice determines who we save and who is left for dead. How will Majory or Braham react towards players in the future based on that decision?

That last bit might be a little darker than Anet is willing to go. It will probably be some heroic sacrifice that leaves their companion devastated.

Either way, someone is going to die.

It will be a player choice which one dies probably

Oh, someone is going to die in heroic fashion. And i think it will be scarlet.

;)

I agree that character deaths are likely and one is due in this finale perhaps. It could be Marjory though, sacrificing herself to save the lovely Kasmeer. Kasmeer has been given some history that’s likely to come into the story later, probably with her alive rather than dead.

Perhaps players can set up their own election campaign right now before the next release. Wear black to save Marjory and wear nothing to save Kasmeer. You know you want to!

Following the reasoning in the first post, Taimi will likely not be killed at this time. The reason is that the character has only just been introduced, and there has hardly been any time for the audience (i.e. us) to grow attached to the character.

Braham and Rox are also safe. Braham will not die before at least one more meaningful interaction with Eir, which is unlikely to happen in just two more updates of a story that hardly involved Eir. And Rox was accidentally named “Rox Whetstone” in one of last year’s Release Preview webpages, meaning that she has been written to earn her place in the Stone Warband.

Marjory is also unlikely to die, not until she has had a chance to solve the Mendel case (which was what turned her away from the Ministry). While the Mendel case has a decent chance to turn out to be Marjory’s undoing, the Scarlet case does not appear to be linked to it. The identity of the mysterious “E” could still be revealed in the current storyline ( – I suspect Evon Gnashblade – ), but if it is not, this mystery will also further enhance Marjory’s appeal. Besides, Marjory is arguably the leader of the group (or the second-in-command, the player character should be considered the leader).

Which leaves us with Kasmeer.

Kasmeer was introduced to us rather early, during Secret of Southsun, and she served no actual purpose there. Her banter with Lord Faren wasn’t even relevant to the plot. She did mention the name “Jory” once, hidden deep in her dialogue. We did not find out who “Jory” was until Dragon Bash (which was when we also met Kasmeer again). During the story instance in Lion’s Arch of “Origins of Madness”, we learned everything there was about Kasmeer and her backstory. She now has no more secrets, and the only character development that she still has is centered on her interactions with Marjory.

If anyone will die, Kasmeer is the most likely candidate.

I don’t think they would kill Majory.

A whole lot of People really like her style.

There is a line there that writers are well aware of and don’t often want to cross. To draw a parallel with…lets use The Walking Dead, people like Hershel and people like Darrel. Viewers would feel bad about Hershel’s death and think it sucked, but they would carry on with the show; on the other hand, if Darrel were to be killed lots of people would just up and stop watching altogether.

Same comparison could be made with early (good) seasons of Dexter. There are characters that die in the books that live through the show because people liked them too much to kill. So other characters were added, written to get the audience attached but not too attached, and then killed.

Tormenting those “safe” characters though is perfectly ok. Either Braham or Majory will see a major loss. But I don’t expect them to go anywhere.

My theory: In her layer ( Bat cave ) She had a map with 4 arrows, I imagine she will attack in 4 directions and our hero will split into 4 teams to head her off, around lions arch. The 4 ways into and out of lions arch.

At some point, probably tward the end of the patch, one of the weaker sides will lose, and that sides heros will probably get the ’’bad’’ ending.

Scarlet will invade and release the Dragon buried under LA, and the dragon consciousness who switched bodies with the real scarlet when she went into oMadds box will return into the dragon and we will get a dragon who fights us in LA.

We kill the dragon, and lose herose, Hopefuly get a wedding, and a few more heroes.

At least thats what i would do.

I would spend Gems to see Braham killed.

Jornophelanthas.1475:

Following the reasoning in the first post, Taimi will likely not be killed at this time. The reason is that the character has only just been introduced, and there has hardly been any time for the audience (i.e. us) to grow attached to the character.

They do exactly that in the personal story. Meet someone in one chapter and two chapters later he/she’s dead.

5 copper on bro-ham, that is, if Scarlet does gets pounded into sawdust first.

He is the one that shows the most passion for their group. He is certainly their glue. And I don’t think there is anything with more impact than shattering their group in their moment of triumph. Rox doesn’t need distractions from joining the Stone war band, and Taimi has grown way too attached to Braham way too fast.

My other theory is we don’t put Scarlet through a wood chipper… but that sound boring.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Jornophelanthas.1475:

Following the reasoning in the first post, Taimi will likely not be killed at this time. The reason is that the character has only just been introduced, and there has hardly been any time for the audience (i.e. us) to grow attached to the character.

They do exactly that in the personal story. Meet someone in one chapter and two chapters later he/she’s dead.

Two counterpoints:

1. The Personal Story cannon fodder NPCs were generated with standard faces and hair meshes that are also available to players in character creation. Taimi and her golem have a unique look, just like Scarlet, the members of Destiny’s Edge and the rulers of the major cities. This is an investment of time and energy that should be justified by frequent use. Getting rid of Taimi at this point is too soon, because the character has not made an impact yet. The other four members of the group have made their impacts to some extent.

2. There was negative player response to the frequent NPC deaths in the Personal Story before the Living Story got written. ArenaNet appears to have taken this into account in the Living Story. (For example, it would have been easy to just kill off Otilia, or the minstrel, or Noll.) Besides, the PS had a different writing team than the LS does. These are all reasons that recently introduced NPCs getting killed left and right is unlikely in the LS.

As long as that ‘someone’ is Scarlet who dies, I don’t care.

Jornophelanthas.1475:

2. There was negative player response to the frequent NPC deaths in the Personal Story before the Living Story got written. ArenaNet appears to have taken this into account in the Living Story. (For example, it would have been easy to just kill off Otilia, or the minstrel, or Noll.) Besides, the PS had a different writing team than the LS does. These are all reasons that recently introduced NPCs getting killed left and right is unlikely in the LS.

Really? I don’t recall any of that. And the only notable deaths I remember were your mentor on claw island, and the sylvari that sacrifices herself in Orr. There was the minor death of your partner in the Fort Trinity, orb chain. But she was around for about five minutes.

Considering the scope of the story, I’m not sure the deaths were overly abundant or out of place. We were fighting the telepathically linked zombie army, of a giant magic eating zombie dragon, that made a kingdom out of the formerly sunken island of the gods. And that was amid-st bandit attacks, a centaur war, two faction wars, terrorists, an evil cult, and the minions of another dragon laying waste to an entire region.

I actually thought the consensus was that the personal story was a little to “Disney” due to very few key deaths that happened off-screen. It was supposed to be a war.

This living story is a little different. At least I hope so. Scarlet started out as a scooby doo villain, but she has been getting darker with each release and is now legitimately deadly since we know that instead of just being slapstick as a narrative device, she is totally batkitten insane murderous and hyper intelligent. She became less Batman the animated series, Harliquinn and more The Killing Joke, Joker. It would be a real shame if Anet decided to cap off that trend towards a darker story with a Saturday morning cartoon ending.

There have been a TON of deaths of NPCs in the game. Play all paths/decisions and you will see them all. That being said, I’ll say it again, the only one that will die at the end of this will be Scarlet in a kind of crazy “you will never control me <insert big bad that will attack LA> blaze of glory as she helps beat it back after is destroys a bunch of stuff”. She is going to have her Macbeth moment.

I hope the attack on LA Siege Master Dulfy makes an appearance.

Sadly, it will be Hero-Tron

I’m pulling for Eir Stegalkin…

Maybe she’ll do something motherly and swoop in before Scarlet can harm Braham.

Therein redeeming her character from pointlessness and oblivion.

(Basically it seems like she’d completely abandoned Braham, especially from his conversations [or lack there-of] about her.)

Don’t worry, it’ll prolly just be Logan along with his queen.

GW2 introduces their first (remotely important) queer couple that isn’t supremely dysfunctional to the point of evil. Half the couple gets frigged only a few updates after we get to know beyond doubt that they’re a couple?

Yup, sounds like the sort of thing that one sadly might still expect, but from GW2? I dunno. (Just to get ahead of critiques that statement, the solution is more non effed up and/or tragic queer folk in media in general, not never killing off an important queer character ever. So calm your butt’s down if you were about to misinterpret and jump on a person for saying that.)

That being said, the reason I bothered to check out this topic was because it feel’s to me like Tami’s got a bit of a target on her back. I couldn’t pin point why either, given that it would feel a bit over the top to kill a newly introduced super sympathetic child shortly after introducing them. As previous posters pointed out thought, GW2 does seem to have a bit of a pattern with introducing likeable NPC’s primarily to kill them off and knock some emotions out of players, what with the NPC deaths in the personal story and all.

AcidicVision.5498:

Perhaps “nothing is sacred” applied to characters more than places. And how would it change the face of Tyria if all of the sudden players knew that key, likable, NPC characters weren’t fixed parts of the world?

I think that Anet has been making Kasmeer and Taimi way too likable as of late. And they are also trying to draw on player sympathies with different personal tragedies for each character.

You see this in movies all the time. Support characters that have overcome something out of the ordinary and who go out of their way to be endearing with every appearance end up being spectacularly killed in order to stoke that emotional investment the audience has. Then each new character that comes along has that added mystique. We know now they can die, so all the moments of suspense are just a little more suspenseful. Out of the three new characters, which one will make it to the end?

So I fully expect either Kasmeer or Taimi to be Scarlet’s final victim at the end of the finale. Maybe it will even be player choice. Similar to the the election. Players have a week to choose the left path or the right, the choice determines who we save and who is left for dead. How will Majory or Braham react towards players in the future based on that decision?

That last bit might be a little darker than Anet is willing to go. It will probably be some heroic sacrifice that leaves their companion devastated.

Either way, someone is going to die.

That has been the pattern in this game. NOTE TO ANET: YOU GUYS REALLY NEED TO GET RID OF THIS CLICHED PATTERN. THIS IS NOT GAME OF THRONES! I will be extremely angry if any harm comes to any other couple in this game. The lack of ongoing romantic relationships is so irritating, I took matters into my own hands: I RP my two Sylvari mains as a married couple who work together and have similar Wyld Hunts.

This pattern is getting too repetitive and shows a lack of imagination on Anet’s part (no offense intended). For all those who think romance has no place in an RPG: I refer all of you to Final Fantasy and other JRPGs. Yes, a game can with romance can sell very well in the Western countries, if it is done right. That’s why I hope the whole Majory x Kasmeer storyline will keep going.

If you’ve played the Sylvari storyline, the whole killing-off-another-person’s-lover happens way too much. Let’s count the broken relationships (romantic & platonic) in the Sylvari PS story (SPOILER WARNING):

I think it’ll most likely be Rox.

Taimi: Despite the fact that nearly every single Asuran in the personal story dies… anyone who kills off a cute, charismatic, cripple Asuran child is literally a terrible human being.

Marjory & Kasmeer: They’re not going to kill of either half of this budding couple and I don’t think even if their characters and relationship were more developed, it wouldn’t be worth it as a plot device.

Braham: I had mixed feelings on him. Insecure with his relationship with Eir but shows potential to be a great soldier/leader. I think it’s more likely we see him grow than get killed off.

Rox: A stalwart, hard working, soldier-type with a human side people can relate to. Has guilt and remorse for losing her warband. One of the better developed and likeable characters of the group.

I think fans of the story might get a little choked up at Braham and Frostbite standing at a little grave in Ascalon.

At this point I’m almost certain that Marjory is in for the cut. She has raised a ton of death flags recently it’s unreal. She is a key character and was introduced early in the living story and has had a lot of character development.
One flag is that she has formed a deep relationship with a character who will miss her.
Another is that she holds a lot of information and the story is driven by her with people relying heavily with a lot of action revolving around her particularly.

Another that really caught my eye was the message she sends you after reviewing the evidence saying this about Kasmeer:
“I’m not eager to expose her to that kind of danger again, no matter how exhilarating she finds it.”
Which is always a one way path to death from protecting someone else.

It was Kasmeer, in the kitchen, with the Quaggan plush pack.

Tybalt left us very suspicious about life-expectancy of likeable characters i see.

Why does everyone forget about Veteran Potential Mate?

@kta, im not sure you can count all of those as Sylvari couple deaths. They are different story lines or different paths of a story line.

For an individual character’s personal story, you only see a third of those. Also it’s not limited to Sylvari. That template applies to pretty much all of the races. There are little narrative differences here or there, but for the most part, everyone’s story goes through the same motions with different dressing until it just gives up and converges (it is a converging story btw, calling it a branching personal story line is a bit of a misnomer) into the same story for everyone near the end.

I understand that kind of. Most players probably wont play through the story for every race and they wanted to make sure everyone had similar experiences going through. At the same time, drastic sweeping and huge thematic changes would have made the story a lot more re-playable.

You guys know what I’m talking about. Fight a big boss then do menial local tasks, meet the orders, then the order thing happens on the island, then start the new place with the guy, then go to Orr and do the things. Sprinkle in some NPC deaths and a character creation shout out at levels X, Y, and Z. And bam, you have every personal story in the game.

Anyways, sorry. I went on a rant. The point is all of those NPC deaths don’t count because they are in different timelines. And those timelines can be replayed, reproduced or changed. You could create a timeline where those characters never die by never playing that mission.

Living story deaths are awesome because they are the same for everyone. They are permanent. They are in the absolute timeline of the lore and will still be an event that happened whether people ignore it, miss it, or come along two years from now. This thing happened and this character is dead forever (Or until someone finds Livia).

My vote is still for Kasmeer

PookieDaWombat.6209:

Oh, someone is going to die in heroic fashion. And i think it will be scarlet.

;)

Ohhh I have a feeling too.

;)

Between Kasmeer-the-naive-ish and Marjory-the-pragmatic, the film 7even comes to mind…

It would be anticlimactic, but what happens to her illusions if Kasmeer dies? You know what I mean…

kta.6502:

For all those who think romance has no place in an RPG: I refer all of you to Final Fantasy and other JRPGs. Yes, a game can with romance can sell very well in the Western countries, if it is done right.

This is where I am torn. I don’t mind the implied idea of characters being romantically involved, but I abhor when it is shoehorned into places where I wish it weren’t.
In Guild Wars, the only major couple was Prince Rurik and Lady Althea, and that turned out really well for the story.
Truth is, Guild Wars 2 is following that same pattern.

I was watching a movie, I forget the name (edit: It was “Bodyguards vs Assassins”), in which a bunch of likable characters were going to stand up to the bad guys, all 12 of them, and defend their town.
Then one of them says he is going to marry the girl of his dreams in 2 days and they are all invited to the wedding. Everybody cheered, had drinks and went to bed…

Deathflags for everyone.

Everyone of the major players in the LS has at least one flag on them right now. Kasmeer currently has the most, in my opinion.

Page 556, Rytlock dies!

Here is Logan, after Queen Jennah dies in LA. :P

Whats gonna to happend next patch.

DarcShriek.5829:

Why does everyone forget about Veteran Potential Mate?

Just outside the West exit from Hoelbrak? You can save him.