Guild Wars 2

Very much like the situation the player base has had about your character knowing Mordremoth’s name back in LW2, who the heck is Livia?!

Unlike Mordremoth’s presence actually being mentioned in the game leading up to that moment of your character saying he’s awake, there is nothing about Livia. Absolutely no context for her at all at least not beyond a single line of dialogue hidden in the game not meant for players who are here to enjoy the story.

“You’re Livia?”

My character knows who the heck a Livia is? She was mentioned in the game before? This is the first time I’ve been absolutely confused about what was going on and the importance of a character.

The question isn’t about how Livia is alive.
The question is should I care who this person is.

Not all knowledge your character has needs to be directly referred to previously in game – I take your point in the sense that it might not mean much to anyone that didn’t play GW1 but I think it was just a nod to the surprise many players of the first game would have IRL (if it hadn’t been spoiled in the trailer).

I think it’s ok personally but then I am heavily invested in the lore and it was a big deal to me.

LOVED Livia.
She was an necromancer in GW1. She was also mysteriously added as a cameo in a cut scene that showed a dragon awaking at the end.

Common knowledge in game might not always come across as easily or get touched up on much. Some things are just generally understood as "things a common Tyrian would know ". Sort of like how your character can speak/read all the diverse languages of the world (Old Krytan, new Krytan, Ascaclonian, Asuran, Orrian, etc.) despite you never taking your character through any language courses. Or masterties, like you had to do to speak with the frogs in HoT.

Eloc Freidon.5692

there is nothing about Livia. Absolutely no context for her at all at least not beyond a single line of dialogue hidden in the game not meant for players who are here to enjoy the story.

In the shining blade instance, after the oath, you can explore the house and find a bunch of interactive objects which describe the history of the Shining Blade, including the third Master Exemplar Livia.

These interactive objects are part of the achievement Student of Bartholos.

There’s also this point of interest in Arah which is featured in the final PS step. Granted this doesn’t tell us much about her, but it could peak players’ interest into doing a little research to find out just who is so important to have an airship named after them like Riannoc, Kalla, and Knut did.

So sorry OP, but you’re wrong. Information about Livia is there, and players are directed to it.

There is more on Livia before her reveal, than there was about Mordremoth (who got a single line confirming six Elder Dragons, and a name via a skill of an explorable dungeon).

And this, of course, excludes not only GW1, but the novels Sea of Sorrows and Ghosts of Ascalon the former having Livia as a major character, the later making mention of her.

EDIT: Now, this isn’t to say they couldn’t have done a better job, but more lore on Livia was produced in this episode than even in GW1, to be honest.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Eloc Freidon.5692

there is nothing about Livia. Absolutely no context for her at all at least not beyond a single line of dialogue hidden in the game not meant for players who are here to enjoy the story.

In the shining blade instance, after the oath, you can explore the house and find a bunch of interactive objects which describe the history of the Shining Blade, including the third Master Exemplar Livia.

These interactive objects are part of the achievement Student of Bartholos.

There’s also this point of interest in Arah which is featured in the final PS step. Granted this doesn’t tell us much about her, but it could peak players’ interest into doing a little research to find out just who is so important to have an airship named after them like Riannoc, Kalla, and Knut did.

So sorry OP, but you’re wrong. Information about Livia is there, and players are directed to it.

There is more on Livia before her reveal, than there was about Mordremoth (who got a single line confirming six Elder Dragons, and a name via a skill of an explorable dungeon).

And this, of course, excludes not only GW1, but the novels Sea of Sorrows and Ghosts of Ascalon the former having Livia as a major character, the later making mention of her.

It is a bit of a side quest to read all the information though. If you merely play through the story, and just leave the story instance after you would quite easily miss all the Livia bits.

But yeah, it’s not that they don’t mention her at all no.

Personally I think it’s perfectly fine for our characters to not know everyone they meet though, even if they are supposedly important characters 250 years ago. As long as that does get played out as such. I think it’s nearly annoying that our character literally knows everything all the time.

I just assume my toons get this knowledge when I’m not playing them. I mean, when I’m not logged in, time still passes in the game world, so what do they do? I reckon they wander about, eat, drink, perform their bodily functions, socialise, study, run errands and probably hook up now and then. They’re not celibate. As long as they get back to their designated spot by the time I log in again, they’re fine.

I was expecting someone with an account name with Livia on it, I’m so disappointed! :<

/wiki livia from the chat window will bring up a page on who she is.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Livia

I don’t care much who Livia is. If she was an important character, the story writers would have introduced her, tell her history, tell me what she did, what makes her special. So far, she’s just an NPC for me. I haven’t played GW1, I guess most current players haven’t.

Livia could have died in that last fight, and it wouldn’t have had any impact on my feelings. I was sad when Marjory’s sister Belinda died, they did a better job making her a believable character than with this Livia. Why should I care about her? Why should I miss her? She’s not even likable.

In my opinion, it’s a bad idea to “introduce” an NPC that way. Do you know someone who talks with you and keeps mentioning people in a way that you think you should know them, because of the way he mentions their names? And you try to act like you know them because obviously, you are supposed to, and you just forgot about them, your fault. And then you bring yourself to actually ask because you feel stupid, and it turns out you never met these people, your buddy has never introduced them to you but talks like you know them for years.

That’s how I felt in that scene where my character asks “Livia, that Livia?” (or something along these lines)

To be fair, I thought the same when my character was talking like he knew Livia. I was fairly surprised, and I actually know the whole Livia thing.

Livia was briefly mentioned in out of the way areas of the game (books and letters you had to search for but were in no way a mandatory part of any quest). But they really did vastly overestimate how many people actually did go that far out of their way to find this stuff. I know who Livia is, sure. I was around in GW1, as a person in the real world who played the game. I read about her in one of the novels that took place between the two games. But the PC in GW2 has done none of those things, because she’s not a real person. She’s a bunch of pixels that exists solely in a universe where he/she would have not done or read literally any of the things I have, so even I thought it was a little ridiculous when she was like “YOU’RE Livia?!”

If anything, the PC would probably mention something like “Oh yeah, I’ve seen that name mentioned…somewhere. I think. I dunno.” but it came off in the game as like the PC was fully aware of Livia and was every bit as excited about her as many of the GW1 vets seemed to be. I know I made a post earlier in this thread about player knowledge vs. what the PC actually knows or whatever, but I do still kind of agree that the PC seemed a bit too familiar with Livia in this story.

Maybe it was to please the older players. The ones who rabidly searched for any clue that literally any NPC with red hair and some kind of importance could be their long lost Livia. I don’t know. But I’m pretty sure GW1 vets like myself, numerous though we may be, are vastly outnumbered by people who never played GW1 and who are probably pretty annoyed that this random chick is treated like someone you should have known this entire time.

PS. To all the people linking to the Livia wiki page, I’m glad you’re pointing people in the right direction, but I think one of the key points of this thread is that if you have to look outside of the game to find out why a key figure of the story is important, someone failed at proper story telling. Yeah, we can all search Livia now, after the fact, but it’s kind of too late.

Eloc Freidon.5692:

Very much like the situation the player base has had about your character knowing Mordremoth’s name back in LW2, who the heck is Livia?!

Unlike Mordremoth’s presence actually being mentioned in the game leading up to that moment of your character saying he’s awake, there is nothing about Livia. Absolutely no context for her at all at least not beyond a single line of dialogue hidden in the game not meant for players who are here to enjoy the story.

“You’re Livia?”

My character knows who the heck a Livia is? She was mentioned in the game before? This is the first time I’ve been absolutely confused about what was going on and the importance of a character.

The question isn’t about how Livia is alive.
The question is should I care who this person is.

Yes, it’s sloppy story-crafting. Sorry, but it’s not the first such aspect of the story lately that has felt like that. Someone needs to go on a writing course.

As others have explained, Livia is one of several NPCs you would have met if you’d played the original GW. Fine, she’s part of the Lore; you could, in theory, have read up on that, and in the process you’d have found out about her. But almost NO players are going to do that. So if you’re going to go for “OMG IT’S LIVIA!” as your big story reveal, good writing says you find an opportunity to remind even those players who HAD met her, that she existed and who she was. And that you do it in-story in this case, not as something that players may or may not trip over., depending on how they play the game.

Sure, the challenge is to do that without making it obvious foreshadowing – but you still have a duty to do it. Otherwise, it’s a bit like a who-dunnit writer getting to the penultimate page and revealing that “THE KILLER… …WAS… …that background guy who appeared in one sentence on page 10, and has never been mentioned or in any way hinted at since!” (Or, in this case, “that woman from a previous book in the series, that you may not even have read, who’s never even been hinted at in this one”.)

FrizzFreston.5290:

It is a bit of a side quest to read all the information though. If you merely play through the story, and just leave the story instance after you would quite easily miss all the Livia bits.

That’s how it is for all the lore though.

Want the vast majority of lore on Zhaitan? You have to dig for it. On Mordremoth? Gotta dig. On Caudecus? Gotta dig. On E? Or Lazarus? Or Balthazar? Gotta dig, dig, dig.

That’s how lore has been set up for the entire GW franchise, since the days of Prophecies. The main story has probably only a third of the full lore on the main events happening or the main characters.

FrizzFreston.5290:

To be fair, I thought the same when my character was talking like he knew Livia. I was fairly surprised, and I actually know the whole Livia thing.

To be fair, only asura and human characters react in knowing who Livia is, and just like the PC knowing the White Mantle in Episode 1, it’s presented from knowing due to history class, which would have happened pre-personal story.

(This does seem weird for sylvari who mention hearing about stories, though, given the PS begins with their awakening.)

So they explained how they knew who Livia was. Charr, sylvari, and I believe norn don’t react in a “I know who Livia is” but rather a “so your name isn’t Kerida, but Livia” manner.

Squee.7829:

PS. To all the people linking to the Livia wiki page, I’m glad you’re pointing people in the right direction, but I think one of the key points of this thread is that if you have to look outside of the game to find out why a key figure of the story is important, someone failed at proper story telling. Yeah, we can all search Livia now, after the fact, but it’s kind of too late.

To be fair, the wiki doesn’t have much that isn’t in the games or books.

There are some bits here and there from interviews or dev comments on forums/reddit/etc., but that’s the minority.

That’s kind of the thing about how ArenaNet handles lore – they put bits here, bits there, and have players find them all like a scavenger hunt. And folks put it up on the wiki for those who don’t like scavenger hunts.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

FrizzFreston.5290:

It is a bit of a side quest to read all the information though. If you merely play through the story, and just leave the story instance after you would quite easily miss all the Livia bits.

That’s how it is for all the lore though.

Want the vast majority of lore on Zhaitan? You have to dig for it. On Mordremoth? Gotta dig. On Caudecus? Gotta dig. On E? Or Lazarus? Or Balthazar? Gotta dig, dig, dig.

That’s how lore has been set up for the entire GW franchise, since the days of Prophecies. The main story has probably only a third of the full lore on the main events happening or the main characters.

FrizzFreston.5290:

To be fair, I thought the same when my character was talking like he knew Livia. I was fairly surprised, and I actually know the whole Livia thing.

To be fair, only asura and human characters react in knowing who Livia is, and just like the PC knowing the White Mantle in Episode 1, it’s presented from knowing due to history class, which would have happened pre-personal story.

(This does seem weird for sylvari who mention hearing about stories, though, given the PS begins with their awakening.)

So they explained how they knew who Livia was. Charr, sylvari, and I believe norn don’t react in a “I know who Livia is” but rather a “so your name isn’t Kerida, but Livia” manner.

Squee.7829:

PS. To all the people linking to the Livia wiki page, I’m glad you’re pointing people in the right direction, but I think one of the key points of this thread is that if you have to look outside of the game to find out why a key figure of the story is important, someone failed at proper story telling. Yeah, we can all search Livia now, after the fact, but it’s kind of too late.

To be fair, the wiki doesn’t have much that isn’t in the games or books.

There are some bits here and there from interviews or dev comments on forums/reddit/etc., but that’s the minority.

That’s kind of the thing about how ArenaNet handles lore – they put bits here, bits there, and have players find them all like a scavenger hunt. And folks put it up on the wiki for those who don’t like scavenger hunts.

Usually it works out well too, I think. This time though, not so much. I think it’s mostly just the way human PC’s reacted to it. And maybe it’s not really bad story telling from Anet and just that we’re used to information being handled a certain way in games.
There are many times in any game where I, the player, might know about a certain subject because I read clues, dug for answers outside the main path, etc. but the PC would act as if they have a minimum amount of knowledge on that same subject.

I think this is just a safe way to handle story telling because any game designer knows that half (at the very least) of all players will not care about all the story details. They’ll just blow through whatever they can with no regard for reading text outside of what is immediately thrown in their faces. (Not trying to sound judgemental. I know some people play games for reasons other than “I want to read a good story”) so they err on the side of caution and make the PC a little ignorant, even if you DID make them read through pages of missing diaries or scrolls or whatever. I guess Anet likes to go the opposite way though. They really want you to read the lore they made so I guess it makes sense that it’s a little punishing for those who didn’t.

Squee.7829:

PS. To all the people linking to the Livia wiki page, I’m glad you’re pointing people in the right direction, but I think one of the key points of this thread is that if you have to look outside of the game to find out why a key figure of the story is important, someone failed at proper story telling. Yeah, we can all search Livia now, after the fact, but it’s kind of too late.

actually livia is in-game all the time, play GW1 and you have a whole story with her.
the thing is, ppl use allot of excuses but the fact remains that you need to play GW1 to know the history of GW2 properly.

sorudo.9054:

the thing is, ppl use allot of excuses but the fact remains that you need to play GW1 to know the history of GW2 properly.

Most book series I read had recaps or some other ways to remind people who a character is, same with TV series. You read all the books but at the 10th volume, you might not remember exactly what the character named Livia did and who she is. It’s just a courtesy of the author to remind you, and not expect you to know every detail by heart after 9 volumes or 4 years. That s missing here.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

FrizzFreston.5290:

It is a bit of a side quest to read all the information though. If you merely play through the story, and just leave the story instance after you would quite easily miss all the Livia bits.

That’s how it is for all the lore though.

Want the vast majority of lore on Zhaitan? You have to dig for it. On Mordremoth? Gotta dig. On Caudecus? Gotta dig. On E? Or Lazarus? Or Balthazar? Gotta dig, dig, dig.

That’s how lore has been set up for the entire GW franchise, since the days of Prophecies. The main story has probably only a third of the full lore on the main events happening or the main characters.

Yeah, I generally do look it up myself too. It’s more of a “I can understand it gets confusing at times if you don’t dig.” rather than “Oh no, they should do it completely different.” But, it is hard to communicate in game when something is common knowledge when the player themselves don’t have that knowledge. Especially in the main storyline.

FrizzFreston.5290:

To be fair, I thought the same when my character was talking like he knew Livia. I was fairly surprised, and I actually know the whole Livia thing.

To be fair, only asura and human characters react in knowing who Livia is, and just like the PC knowing the White Mantle in Episode 1, it’s presented from knowing due to history class, which would have happened pre-personal story.

(This does seem weird for sylvari who mention hearing about stories, though, given the PS begins with their awakening.)

So they explained how they knew who Livia was. Charr, sylvari, and I believe norn don’t react in a “I know who Livia is” but rather a “so your name isn’t Kerida, but Livia” manner.

Yeah, I suppose it can be explained that way. Considering Livia was a pretty prominent person in the shining blade, and afaik the current kingdom of Kryta is build upon the shining blade and the seraph (shortly said). Though for those who don’t know Livia this would be fairly strange regardless. I wasn’t thinking, of course my character knows Livia! And More like, Oh so my character knows Livia? Okay.

If I walked up to you and introduced myself as Julius Caesar, your response would be similar to your character’s response to meeting Livia.

You, and most people on the planet, know who Julius Caesar was.
Similarly, your character, and most people in Tyria, know who Livia was.

In both cases, the vast majority of the population also assumes the famous person is dead. In the real world I’m not Julius Caesar, but in Tyria she is Livia.

Introducing historical characters in a game is difficult, since you didn’t get to experience every living moment of your character’s life and thus you (the player) have giant information gaps unless you do a lot of lore reading.

I’d go so far as to say that’s why most of the time historical characters are either simply referenced as Easter eggs or ignored entirely.

Doing a bit of research, I can confirm that only humans and asura really give two flips about the Livia revelation. Humans care, because she was a Shining Blade member from the Eye of the North era who later became a leading member (as papers in the Shining Blade HQ confirmed). The asura care who she is because she was acquired as a hero by entering the asura areas of Eye of the North, and thus worked closely with them. The other races are just confused about this person, who had been called Kerida up to that point, suddenly being called another name by Lazarus.

I admit, the information about Livia easily found within the instance, especially after the reveal, is pretty sparse and doesn’t really explain things to players who only know GW2. I don’t feel this is a huge loss, though, as you would be free to shrug it off yourself. Honestly, she could have died in this instance, and it would have been a respectable end to Livia’s story. Many long-time fans might be annoyed by this, seeing as she’d been teased for many years, but it would have been an ending. Now that we know she is here and her generations-long quest to exterminate the mursaat has been achieved, are we likely to see her again? Maybe. Perhaps she and Ogden will have tea together and discuss the good old days.

Rognik.2579:

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I say Eye of the North would have set it quite standard to know who Livia is for all Races since EotN is the events that lead the world of Tyria to become what it is now.

EotN is basically History 101 at this point except for the part that the GW1 Hero identity has been lost to time itself since no one remembers the GW1 Hero and only Knows about the Hero’s Companions due to time and different interpretations altering the story to their own views.

Atonement.8021:

Not all knowledge your character has needs to be directly referred to previously in game.

About this – often stuff is referred to but it’s super out-of-the-way or super obscure and any regular player just following personal story and events will never come across it.

I always liked this about GW. If you took the time to speak to out-of-the-way NPCs and read random books in the world, etc. you could read hints about other sub-plots yet to be explored which then made them richer for you when the time came because you read about it already.

If we take Livia as an example. I can’t think of much in-game which references her. There is a PoI called the Wreck of the Lady Livia and there is a note about Livia in Oola’s Lab in Metrica Province I think. ArenaNet could definitely have done better at introducing her but I suppose this is down to constraints within the story and the resourcing of same.

Those of us who played GW1 will know her, those of us who have read the books will be more up-to-date with her back story, so for us her reveal was really good to see. I do feel for GW2-only players who are left thinking “Huh…???” at the end of the story, and wouldn’t blame them for it.

Speaking of scraps of information that’s really out-of-the way … if you read all the stuff in the house at the end of the Shining Blade Secrets story you get to learn that The Shining Blade was actually gifted to that faction by the Seers. I wonder if this information will play a role later on. Seers are just another facet of old Guild Wars lore that GW2-only players will have almost never heard about. A reveal of a Seer in GW2 would be seriously moistening for me… but not so for GW2-exclusive players I think.

One thing I would note is that there is something that makes it surprising that the human PC immediately says “You’re THAT Livia?”

Which is that in Sea of Sorrows, that’s not the response to the protagonists – mostly human in the scene in question – meeting Livia. One of the characters observes that Livia was possibly in the Shining Blade at the time of Zhaitan’s rise (which was well within living memory at the time) – none of them seemed to connect the name Livia to the founder of the Shining Blade as we know it today.

Perhaps our PC is simply better educated on that period of history than Cobiah Marriner was.

Faaris.8013:

sorudo.9054:

the thing is, ppl use allot of excuses but the fact remains that you need to play GW1 to know the history of GW2 properly.

Most book series I read had recaps or some other ways to remind people who a character is, same with TV series. You read all the books but at the 10th volume, you might not remember exactly what the character named Livia did and who she is. It’s just a courtesy of the author to remind you, and not expect you to know every detail by heart after 9 volumes or 4 years. That s missing here.

If i go to you and introduce my self as bifrost you would just assume that’s my name but if you know nordic history you’ll know bifrost isn’t just a name but a way of transport from and to asgard, it’s exactly the same thing with livia.
livia in GW2 has some notes around tyria but not so obvious, if you actually try and learn the history of tyria you would know livia allot better.
even in-game (and GW1 is still in-game) there are plenty of ways to know her, you just need to put some effort in it.

Faaris.8013:

I don’t care much who Livia is. If she was an important character, the story writers would have introduced her, tell her history, tell me what she did, what makes her special. So far, she’s just an NPC for me. I haven’t played GW1, I guess most current players haven’t.

Livia could have died in that last fight, and it wouldn’t have had any impact on my feelings. I was sad when Marjory’s sister Belinda died, they did a better job making her a believable character than with this Livia. Why should I care about her? Why should I miss her? She’s not even likable.

In my opinion, it’s a bad idea to “introduce” an NPC that way. Do you know someone who talks with you and keeps mentioning people in a way that you think you should know them, because of the way he mentions their names? And you try to act like you know them because obviously, you are supposed to, and you just forgot about them, your fault. And then you bring yourself to actually ask because you feel stupid, and it turns out you never met these people, your buddy has never introduced them to you but talks like you know them for years.

That’s how I felt in that scene where my character asks “Livia, that Livia?” (or something along these lines)

One problem here is the same one that plagues comic book movies, and ultimately has no good solution when you’re on a short time table. A single reference can infer a wikis worth of knowledge if the audience has knowledge of the setting; but to catch up an audience that doesn’t, can take a lot of time and effort that could be better spent advancing the story.

Using DC and Marvel movies as examples…. Marvel actually made the effort the do world building, by giving each character their own story arc prior to making use of them in an Ensemble. Sometimes they’ll even lace in the main thread of another character’s movie. However, DC completely leaned on audience familiarity of charters when they did Batman v Superman… only to take liberties from the source material when drafting the script. They learned their lesson, and went all the way in the exact opposite direction with Suicide Squad; spending half the movie trying to cram every character back story as exposition, and not even getting through all of them before the plot needed to happen.

However… theres a much bigger concern. Dropping too many hints in a short story arc gives away the plot. So you either have to trust the audience to have cursory knowledge of a subject, or spend time building knowledge to have pay off later. Since Livia is a reference to GW1, and ties to several major story arcs in Tyrian lore, they’d have to spend a whole chapter to cover it all… and in the process make it obvious that its leading up to a big “reveal”. The reveal of Balthazar was hinted throughout the earlier chapters…. but they were so subtle and easily dismissed, most people weren’t even aware a connection existed. All we knew for sure was Lazarus was lying to us about his intentions.

A lot folks have criticized the personal story missions as being either too cliche, predictable, or unimaginative. So with LS3 they made a major effort to craft a mystery that could be told in about 20 minutes of dialog, but not make it obvious from the lead up dialog what the answer to the mystery is.

Livia was/is legendary on the level of Jora. If memory serves, she was one of the survivors of the original Shining Blade. Our characters in Prophecies were also members of the order…

Shock and awe are appropriate responses to seeing her return.

starlinvf.1358:

However… theres a much bigger concern. Dropping too many hints in a short story arc gives away the plot. So you either have to trust the audience to have cursory knowledge of a subject, or spend time building knowledge to have pay off later. Since Livia is a reference to GW1, and ties to several major story arcs in Tyrian lore, they’d have to spend a whole chapter to cover it all… and in the process make it obvious that its leading up to a big “reveal”. The reveal of Balthazar was hinted throughout the earlier chapters…. but they were so subtle and easily dismissed, most people weren’t even aware a connection existed. All we knew for sure was Lazarus was lying to us about his intentions.

I think the issue is that it was a poor choice of plot because of the point you mention. They couldn’t give more details about Livia without giving away the plot. However, without giving more details those who hadn’t played GW1 were left with a story that was confusing and/or lacking in impact.

TL;DR of previous three posts: ArenaNet should have put more lore references to Livia in the earlier game, before we were getting her involved in the plot, like we’ve gotten of Pyre or Jora.

TL;DR of other posts: Livia should have had a bigger role in Season 3 to matter to non-GW1 players.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

TL;DR of previous three posts: ArenaNet should have put more lore references to Livia in the earlier game, before we were getting her involved in the plot, like we’ve gotten of Pyre or Jora.

TL;DR of other posts: Livia should have had a bigger role in Season 3 to matter to non-GW1 players.

They could at least have had Exemplar Kerida showing up being mysterious previously. For instance, she could have been in Bloodstone Fen, saying that she was there on her own mission independent of the hunt for Caudecus. Then again in the mursaat ruins in Ember Bay. When we found the aspect in Caudecus’ bedroom, they could have had Canach mentioning that Kerida is an expert on Lazarus. That way, when the reveal happens, it’s of a character who’s been mysterious for months, not one whom we may have first met in GW2 just hours (or even less!) before the reveal.

It’s almost offensive really. They expect us to care just because they tell us to in their kittenty fanfiction. It just shows how disconnected the writers are from the average audience who just don’t give a kitten about their fantasy world like they do.

And this cringy character isn’t the first time, either. As someone who was on a hiatus during season 1, I still have trouble giving a kitten about any of those new characters that got thrown at my face since. Why should I feel anything about any of those annoying kittens I haven’t even connected to. They just don’t learn or don’t care.

Yes it was an odd intro for him. Yes Livia is a guy.