Guild Wars 2

3: Scarlet Briar and the systematic destruction of lore. First of all, I’ll start at the most obvious deviation from lore. Sylvari don’t have last names, there’s not a single sylvari in the entire LS/PS/open world that has a last name. Scarlet Briar is a sylvari with a last name. Why does she have a last name? I have no idea, but if Arena Net’s creative writing team is capable of overlooking a flaw as blatant as that, I have low hopes for them.

Second, how is she so well-educated? Not only has she graduated from all three colleges, something even Snaff couldn’t do, but she’s been trained by several other races as well. If non-asura can get into colleges now, why haven’t we seen more examples in the game beforehand? The amount of time it would take to graduate from all three asura colleges, and then also be trained by four other races is far outside the timeframe that sylvari have walked Tyria.

Third, Scarlet not only helped spur on the Molten Alliance, but she also formed the Aetherblade. If you thought the lore fell out the window beforehand, this is where it jumps off a bridge. I’ll start with the MA. The flame legion sect of the MA would never, ever listen to what Scarlet is. She is a female, and not a charr. Now, she could have talked to a charr that would talk to the flame legion on her behalf, but even that’s unlikely. The charr only really listen to Gaheron’s dead corpse and their destroyer gods.

Now onto the dredge sect. Dredge are very xenophobic creatures that hate most outsiders. They wouldn’t listen to a sylvari unless she had very tangible evidence that she’d be able to give them great power. That’s what the inquest did in Sorrow’s Embrace. So in the off chance that Scarlet did have something to give them, it’d still be unlikely that they would ally with even more strangers, the flame legion. The only conceivable way that the dredge and charr would ally is if the charr talked to the dredge or vice versa.

The last two things I want to touch on in this lore abortion are both mechanical in nature. The watchknights and steam creatures. The watchknights aren’t exactly related to Scarlet other than the fact that she corrupts them. Though, they do need to be talked about due to the fact that, like Scarlet, they are just another asset added in for the sake of story. Arena Net, you expect me to believe that Queen Jennah’s engineers were able to construct an army of completely gear-powered robots in a country where the only person who had an interest for robotics died in Caudecus’ Manor? There’s also the fact that they’re only purpose is to be hit on by random adventurers. It’s as if all of Divinity’s Reach forgot that there’s a human-centaur war going on.

Finally, the steam creatures. We have three examples of steam creatures in the world. Lornar’s Pass, the asura personal story, and the Aetherblade. If Arena Net didn’t go this path in the LS there would be easy explanations as to why the steam creatures are seen in three separate areas. But the steam creatures in Lornar’s and the asura personal story are never touched upon. It’s as if the creative team forgot they even exist, which wouldn’t surprise me that much. There was a lot of potential here, alternate realities, full-scale assaults on major cities, the inquest, but it was all thrown aside for some cardboard villain that’s only evil to be evil and try to tie up loose ends in the worst way possible.

4: Closing. In conclusion, Scarlet Briar isn’t the fantastic villain some people are making her out to be. She’s a stereotypical manic with unobtainable character points. She’s evil only for the sake of being evil and is Arena Net’s horrible attempt to try and explain things that already happened. Unfortunately she’s so terrible and horribly implemented that she makes more loose ends than tying them. I used to have hopes that this LS would actually be an interesting way to advance the plot of the world, but instead we’ve gotten generic villain with no backstory after generic villain with no backstory. Hopefully some of you will agree with at least some of my points made here today, thank you.

Sources: The official wiki, Woodenpotatoes, and Shade Warband’s guild chat and mumble.

1: Mechanical flaws. I’m sure this is a broken record by now, and might’ve even been fixed by the time this post starts circulating around; but why is the communication device soulbound? Not everyone did the opening event on their main, specially since you can theoretically complete it at any level. So those that did that, not including me, are at a disadvantage until this is fixed.

The other flaw I’m going to talk about isn’t much of a flaw but more of a horrible implementation of one of the newest mechanics. I’m talking about the random invasions. While on paper invasions like this could be very neat and interactive, it was executed in such a poor manner. First of all, the invasions aren’t really invasions. I don’t know about you all, but when you invade something you usually either subjugate or destroy the local population and then move on to take out other areas of interest. You do not just randomly portal in to random areas of the zone and sit there waiting to die. I’m going to use the Iron Marches invasion as my example. Several of the portals were in the wilderness where nothing was going on. If you’re going to use shock tactics, use them in places where you can actually shock people, such as porting into populated settlements, like RIFT. Even with the current setup, there are still areas for redemption that aren’t touched on at all. The invasion force could actually roam the map and head towards settlements, but does it? No.

2:The Crown Pavilion gating. I’m told that the Crown Pavilion is still open, but only if you accomplish a certain set of prerequisites to get back into it. Why is it like this? Why would Arena Net make a very superb piece of content and then hide it behind a convoluted gate of content that’s just awful? I enjoyed the Crown Pavilion, even though that destroyed lore as well, but I’ll get back to that soon. The Crown Pavilion was an enjoyable place to level up lower alts and to fight in the bubble arenas up top. They were great, although infuriating. Unfortunately they’re all now gated behind lackluster content that’s actually pushing people away from completing it. This doesn’t only hurt the people that don’t want to do the content, it also hurts the people that have done the content. Seeing as you need an army of players to be efficient in the Pavilion, without large numbers you’re going to slow to a crawl.