Guild Wars 2

Anyone else feel like the plot this season has just been a scrambled mess?

This last episode as others mentioned has an opportunity to do the awesome collection achievement they did in Draconis Mons but involving the gods and lore about them or the exodus, but I guess they’re saving that for another time?

This reintroduction of Lazarus and introduction of Livia just feels like some random fan service thing they threw in so they wouldn’t have to talk about any of the existing plots. It’s nice that Livia is in the story after all, but did we need to revive and kill Lazarus all in one instance for no reason other than Livia shows up and decides we can help her get revenge?

I get that the previous episodes have involved Lazarus so it seems relevant, but is it?

I don’t know what to think, honestly. The whole thing just seems like a disjointed mess. There are so many other things going on between Rhytlock, Aurene, Braham, the elder dragons, Balthazar?

But they decided to just do a few lines about Braham that are hard to catch because you’re in the middle of a chaotic fight, don’t do anything with Rhytlock or Aurene, and toss in the Eye of Janthir and Lazarus while simultaneously trying to make it about Balthazar?

What is even happening anymore?

I agree. Too many threads and a result, each are not getting the time investment due as they get rapdily ticked off.

- lazarus revealed. Lazarus is not lazarus. Lazarus returns. Lazarus killed.

- livia returns and is a disguised as a new random npc and her story is now done already

- braham gets scroll, breaks tooth in quickly discarded cutscene and then surrounds jormag even though you cant just walk up and attack a fully active Dragon (ie the pount behind the Zhaitan and Mordemoth build ups)

- Aurene is here! But that thread is hanging now

- Rytlock’s story still hanging

- Balthazar is back – a major arc, yet bumped back to the expansion so we can bring in some unrelated GW1 shining blade lore

- non humans can now joun the shining blade so we can find out the shining blade want to resurrect lazarus and kill him. Killing mursaat is a known objective of the shining blade, making this weird initiation instance unnecessary.

Plus we have Caudecus, white mantle, krytan conflicts over a returned God….so. many things to cover, some of which deserved an entire season of their own. We need to get back to a centralised, defined story arc again. Since the start of HoT, everything feels like a rush to get as many stories told and half told as possible.

• Livia really sucks at her job, doesn’t she? She’s had a couple HUNDRED YEARS to track down those items, and she failed it completely. The White Mantle, on the other hand, managed it despite all their problems. Hell, even Caudecus did a better job of finding them than Livia did.

• Speaking of Livia’s stupidity, why did she decide that the basement of a temple of a rouge god, which has been in use by ANOTHER rogue god, was the right place to summon Lazarus? With only one person for back-up! She could have gotten him summoned in front of a firing squad armed with every horrifying toy the charr and asura could dream up, with full crews of mages ready to block his spells. But nope! She gave him a good chance of killing her and escaping, because she’s Livia. Livia the Idiot.

• Why would my character agree to hand over the aspect to Justicar Araya? She was acting oddly, and clearly hiding something. Why even bring that thing to Divinity’s Reach, when we know there’s still some White Mantle around in the shadows? And agreeing to take that oath? NO. That’s just stupid, and that’s as a human noble. When I run my charr through the story, there’s no way he’d even bother to consider listening to her. That item would be locked away in the Black Citadel until it can be destroyed. They can play their little game of secrets, that doesn’t mean I have to go along with it.

• But that’s okay, it’s not like we really took the oath properly, right? Because we never shut off the communicator with Taimi. She heard it all, and most likely even has a recording of it. Oops! But nobody died from breaking their oaths by speaking where Taimi could hear it, so there’s clearly no magic there to punish us if we do the same.

• Getting to the new zone made me happy. Having the story padded out by making it require doing all of the hearts in the zone did not. That’s just there to slow us down and make it take longer, pure and simple.

• Finally, it’s annoying that we have once again seen most of the LS3 mastery line go unused. Variation on the thermal fountains to launch us around? No. Using Koda’s flame to burn away corruption? No. Oakheart essences from the attempts to bring life back to Orr? No. And it’s clear that the overly expensive 6th power from that Mastery will never be used again, too.