Guild Wars 2

Did I miss something? I don’t remember this Livia person being mentioned at any point in the current storyline. In fact, I don’t recall hearing her mentioned anywhere at all in the various storyline elements of GW2! Who the heck is this person and why are we working together?

Lazarus. Okay, I understand that the mursaat are bad guys, but I have no idea what they did except that they seem to have a less-than-friendly history with humans. I thought the reason Lazarus just sort of disappeared after being so prominent in the first episode of season 3 was that he wasn’t really Lazarus at all, but Balthazar in disguise. It still left me wondering who Lazarus is, but as he wasn’t strictly relevant to the story I was willing to let it go.

Now here I am killing Lazarus as the final encounter of season 3? Why? At least tell me who he is and why I want to kill him! As far as I could tell, by the end of the last episode all I got out of the entire thing was a brief moment with the Eye of Janthir to show me where Balthazar went!

I guess I am just left wondering why I care about any of this. Weak finish to the season, in my opinion. I guess it’s a good thing I’m excited about the next expansion, at least.

They are characters from GW1. I cannot answer your other questions.

This post may answer your questions: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/lwd/Me-no-understand-LW-story/first#post6657651

Good luck.

I agree with you. Seems like the biggest reveal of the story was ‘omg its Livia!’ But as a GW2 player I’ve never heard of Livia before. I do not really even understand why we agreed to join the shining blade, we are the commander! why should we willingly put ourselves under some death spell that wasn’t even truly explained and make ourselves beholden to these people.

Lazarus appearing (again but not again) was super confusing, yes we did some cool death leap stab to kill him but why does my character even want him dead!

I like story with some depth, but chopping and changing story with no real explanation is annoying (kill dragons, oh wait, don’t do that, kill lazarus, oh wait, don’t do that, kill balthazar, oh wait that’s too hard, kill lazarus again). I always read everything in the story and take my time, but this is the first time I have been totally lost and confused, not to mention totally disappointed in the end in which nothing even happened!!

Not even an update on aurene after all the baby dragon hype.

It’s kind of like they just had a bunch of different points and drew one out of a hat and rolled with it.

I really don’t mind the Lazarus and Livia reveal, but was this the best way and time? Was this really worth it to those of GW1 that have long been awaiting the reveal of these characters? Did it do them justice?

I suppose Livia’s wasn’t horrible, but poor Lazzy got shafted.

This was a terribly written episode. Not in the sense of the actual dialog or anything, just in the sense of gluing an idiot ball to the PC and being just shy of a shaggy dog plot. Nearly everything that happened seemed to happen for no reason other than narrative convenience.

So, we ask human priests about Balthazar, to figure out what his next move might be. So far, so good. Whoever came up with this part understands things like “plot following characters making justifiable choices based on their personality, goals, and the information available to them”.

We happen to run into Anise there. Why? Cuz writer says so. (Is she just camping out, waiting for us to show up?). Well, 2 minutes in and the plot is off the rails, and it’s only downhill from here.

She sends us to recover an agent, because Balthazar still has an aspect of Lazarus (they know this, how?) and we can use the Eye to track him. The Eye’s behavior might be plausible, but a) doesn’t that mean there’s an 80% chance the eye would be tracking the other aspects instead of Balthazar’s aspect? and b) why would he keep the aspect if he has no further use for the Mantle? Why did he keep it at all, in fact, when he could have just tossed into a volcano and avoided the remote chance of a second Lazarus popping up to screw up his deception? Cuz writer says so.

We recover the agent, but get inexplicably curious about what she wants with the aspect. Now, a single non-bloodstone-powered mursaat isn’t much threat relative to gods and dragons, and the shining blade’s intentions regarding Mursaat are pretty straightforward. Why are we so super-duper concerned about such petty matters? Cuz, writer says so.

The only way to learn about what they are doing is to swear a death-oath to a human-specific intelligence agency, whether or not we are human or a dutiful member of a society barely avoiding war with them. Of course, the only thing we learn relevant to saving the world is that the Eye is in Orr, which isn’t exactly a state secret. Why not just use the imminent explosion of Tyria as a justification to get them to tell us as much information as they’re allowed to, and not commit treason? Cuz writer says so.

After that, we get sent to hunt the Eye, eventually find it in the reliquary of Abaddon, and the SB shows up. We discover the Eye and the last aspect, but no Balthazar (duh). There’s also no explanation of why B was here, why he left the aspect here, or why there is a pentagram set up here in the long-abandoned reliquary of a sunken continent that seems expressly designed for the purpose of resurrecting Lazarus. (Wait, I know why! Cuz writer says so)

At this point, we are boned — our whole kittening nonsensical plan was to follow the Eye until it led us to B, but he ditched the tracking device, so to speak. Despite this, we decide to help our new annoying ally revive and destroy the last Mursaat. Aside from being fairly blase about the genocide of a race of living people, why do we not, you know, just insist that she throw the aspects into a volcano and avoid the risk of letting Lazarus loose (hey, it must be a big deal, since we swore a death oath to learn about what they planned to do about Lazarus)? Cuz, writer says so.

Having witnessed the death of the last Mursaat, the Eye of Janthir immediately disappears, and having lost Balthazar’s trail, we can only sit back helpless and watch as the world is destroyed.

Wait, no, it develops the new ability to act as a magic crystal ball (cuz…), which Livia for some reason knows about (cuz…), and conveniently waits for us to use it before self-destructing (cuz…)

You know, I like GW1. But kitten this entire episode. I did like the new map, though.

I am wondering why people keep calling out “genocide” on lazarus case.

he is one entity of extinct race, with no hope to recreate the race in the first place, and only a desire to survive on his own to come back later and get into power again.

Shining Blade didn’t commit anything close to genocide on mursaats at any point – they killed 4 – that’s all – and actually player characters in Guild Wars: Prophecies have killed mroe mursaats than whole shining blade can ever hope for – and even then it is rather small number compared to the whole race because what have got whole the rest of the race was titans who were unleashed onto them – by the guy who thought he was destinied to unleash them and rule the world with them.

and actually mursaats themselves were actually actively comminting genocide on humans of kryta by slaughtering hundreds of them every year to keep the battieries keeping the titans out, charged.

but yeah we happened to kill the last one of them [shining blade could account for last 4 of them probably] let’s keep screaming “genocide”.

as for the perilisk points:
1. Anise happens to be there because she was trying to convince the priest to get his followers in line because balthazars worshippers looking for random fights were making trouble in the city – convenient to be happening at same point? possibly, but then anise is one of those persons who likes to actually pull out “random convenient” meetings

2. Shining Blade’s job is to know things – keeping track of who was last seen with which powerfull artifact is one of things you’d expect from them. and since he was carrying it aroudn last tiem he was seen there is no reason to suspect him to just dump it at “random” reliquary on his way out right? :P

3. why he have kept it with himself so long – well you don’t ditch powerfull artifacts on the corners – and while at that point he had no use of white mantle maybe he could need some extra manpower at a poitn – and what would be better way to get such than blackmailing a group of fanatics with a piece of their “god”?

4. leading up other aspects than the one in posession of balthazar – considerign how it abandons this one as soon as it gets “recovered” it would be bound to run out of “other” aspects at a point right?

5. even when not “bloodstone powered” a mursaat would pose a threat and a danger to efforts against the dragons – just like a lone human god is sidetracking us from the main issue of how to prevent dragons from eventually killing us all

6. the oath is to learn what shining blade was intending to do with lazarus aspects – and anise take it out as a good idea for the future case – we are not supposed to run errands for anise now – it is just for the sake of her being able to tell us [in a future] things without risking us blapering them around.

7. one thing that is obvious here is that balthasar went there specifically on his route to crystal desert to dump the artifact there – while pentagram itself was indeed convenient there is nothing to say if it wasn’t there for different purpose originally [which most likely was a case – but bashing writer is just simply easier I guess]

8. we do not have much choice at that point – aspects have happened to be in a proximity and the chances were that it could not be stopepd at that point – so why not take a chance to finally remove one possible enemy from the equasion once andfor all?

9. at no poitn eye of janthir have developped new abilities – from the very beginning it was powerfull magical entity which role was to see things – being able to show these things is not a far stretch and considering the fact that it have just witnessed the death of it’s last master it is not a much of stretch to assume it would firstly wait and see what the guy who killed it want to do – and since we were only interested in knowing where specific guy is, it didn’t filled the lack of a reason to exist – it decided to cease to – simple as that – who knows maybe if we told it thing like “serve me now” it would hang aroudn and be more usefull than one simple vision…..

yeah yeah I know – it is just much easier to bash the writers and assuem them being bad at writing story than to try to think to see if there isn’t a deeper explanation to the thing……

They lost me on story stuff back when Trahearne wouldn’t shut up for a minute and it’s been really tough trying to care again. Maybe it’s the voice actor for my character but nothing ever feels dire in a real sense. He always sounds like he’s only acting serious to play along with the angsty larpers like he’s their counselor just trying to keep them from hurting themselves or their classmates.