One of the things I didn't like in the PoF story (SPOILERS)

[Erasculio.2914]

There's an interesting [summary of Path of Fire](

) on Reddit. Mostly meant as a joke, but rather accurate as well. Reading it reminded me of one of the things I didn't like about the storyline: it often removed things from the world instead of adding to it. For example...

 

We heard that Glint had a son before Aurene. That sounds like it could be an interesting story! Where is he?

 

* Gone. Killed.

 

So we finally hear about the Human Gods? They have always had very interesting lore. Where are they?

 

* Gone. Went away from the world (for real this time).

 

Destiny's Edge used a magical spear made from the dragons to try to kill Kalkratorik. Looks like it could be interesting! Where is it?

 

* Gone. Destroyed. That part of the storyline was so kitten (not a nice looking kitten, no, one of those evil looking ones) I almost refused to go along with it.

 

Balthazar, the God of War and Fire, murderer of his father, champion to the humans, possible destroyer of the world. The only one who successfully killed the main character. Sounds like that could be the basis of a long story. Where is he?

 

* Gone. Dead.

 

...I mean... PoF's story is very simple. Someone said here a while ago, and I agree: it feels like a story written by young people for young people. Ignoring the lack of emotional impact (our character dies in one chapter, and in the next is laughing with Canach about getting carried away in pretending to be one of Joko's minion), the storyline managed to make the world of Guild Wars 2 far smaller than it was before PoF.

 

Imagine the possibilities, for example, if, instead of killing Balthazar, he had been depowered and made a prisioner (before someone says that arresting a NPC is not fit for a PG-13 game, remember Mai Trin and Canach). We would finally have had a moment to give him some depth and allow players to see his point of view. Even the Herald of Balthazar had the beginning of a personality before she, too, was gone.

 

The storyline could have been a lot better, and a lot deeper, if its answer to character development weren't to remove things and characters from the world.

 

[Kingkiller.9645]

> @Erasculio.2914 said:

> The storyline could have been a lot better, and a lot deeper, if its answer to character development weren't to remove things and characters from the world.

>

 

I wish we had seriousness in the story. When we came back to life, we should have came back with our friends not knowing we were alive. There should have been consequences. We would come back, spend a couple of chapters away, and then reunite with them while they were confronting Balthazar. Like, "remember me, bitch?".

[Downfall.4613]

> @Kingkiller.9645 said:

> I wish we had seriousness in the story. When we came back to life, we should have came back with our friends not knowing we were alive. There should have been consequences. We would come back, spend a couple of chapters away, and then reunite with them while they were confronting Balthazar. Like, "remember me, kitten?".

 

Agreed. You could just completely cut the commanders death from the story and it wouldn't change anything at all. It made no impact whatsoever.

[Endless Soul.5178]

If there's one thing the internet has shown me, it's that there are plot/character/dialog experts _everywhere_.

[Westenev.5289]

Part of Vlast's tragedy was that we got to hear about him, but never heard from him. He died protecting us, despite knowing very little about who we were. I like that, and it says a lot more about Vlast's character than a few placeholder lines and some minor plot relevance.

 

The Human Gods have always been useless, and apparently don't understand the concept of a power vacuum. They're clearly flawed characters who have all but given up on Tyria (because they think the world is so fragile, it’s going to fall apart any second). From a storyline perspective, this does add a little bit of intrigue… all the while confirming the human’s worst case.

 

The Spear made of Kralkatorik’s blood wasn’t at all useful to us – and only served as a liability. The group had no way to extract it to a safe location due to a lack of friendlies in the area (which was now Branded), and they couldn’t let the Elder Dragon be killed (or else, the world end). The only safe decision was to destroy the spear.

 

Another interesting thing about the spear was the background intrigue – was this “the weapon” that Vlast talked about? Perhaps not – and did Balthazar even know the spear existed? Was the forged base just conveniently placed near glints lair, meaning we destroyed the spear out of paranoia?

 

As for killing Balthazar… come on, that wasn’t even a spoiler… and it confounds me that anyone expected anything different. It was a trope, an inevitability that was built up from LS3. There was no other way the expansion could have ended.

 

In regards to character development, I really like what they did with Kasmeer and “Cuddles”, and especially liked what they continued doing with Taimi and Canach. These characters are growing and evolving, and I hope they can continue to give this sort of treatment while developing the Dragons Watch B team (Brahm, Rox and Jory).

 

In short, I liked the PoF story – it was a vast improvement over HoT and Personal Story. It had some ooh, ahh moments, as well as some moments that made me go… “oh, shit, maybe I need to get serious…”.

 

Don’t get me wrong, the expansion had some flaws – especially in delivery. The points you touched on weren’t really all that bad, or you set your expectations a little high.

[Palador.2170]

> @Downfall.4613 said:

> > @Kingkiller.9645 said:

> > I wish we had seriousness in the story. When we came back to life, we should have came back with our friends not knowing we were alive. There should have been consequences. We would come back, spend a couple of chapters away, and then reunite with them while they were confronting Balthazar. Like, "remember me, kitten?".

>

> Agreed. You could just completely cut the commanders death from the story and it wouldn't change anything at all. It made no impact whatsoever.

 

Half true. Our death showed us what was happening with Joko, which nobody even in his own realm knew. We were able to put that knowledge to good use. But there were possibly better ways to have found out about that.

 

Maybe it will have more impact as the story goes on. I mean, we literally came back from the dead. The Commander may have just shrugged it off, but for him/her in many ways it was a logical flow of events that made sense. For everyone else in the party, it was finding the mangled corpse, trying to come to terms with the fact that they'd lost their leader and friend, only to have the Commander suddenly go from mangled to intact and from dead to very much alive like it was one more thing to check off of the list of chores for the day.

 

Canach was the one that may be the most shaken by it, I think. Yes, he dismissed it with some snark, but ... does he even get to go to the mists when he dies? He just saw someone in the party he's with die, killed by a (small g) god no less, and come back from it. I think he's finally ready to stop and realize that if he stays with us, he WILL eventually die. Everyone there will. But for him, there may not be a second chance. Thus, the need for some snark to cover himself.

 

As to the main topic of the thread, I hate that Vlast died before we ever got a chance to know him. But, I think that's for the best. It makes for a better tragic character that way, I think. And as Glint was the dragon Destiny's Edge failed to save, so the new guild has Vlast. We'll get to see if they have us actually carry that burden or not as the story goes on.

[Westenev.5289]

To be fair, there is a current event that has been going on since Halloween called "the red lady", which players are attributing to Dhuum (the god of death before Grenth). Dhuum apparently hated resurrections, and quite liked the finality of death.

 

If this is the case, it wouldn’t be surprising if another god has us in his crosshairs.

[Kingkiller.9645]

> @"Endless Soul.5178" said:

> If there's one thing the internet has shown me, it's that there are plot/character/dialog experts _everywhere_.

 

I'm a writer, and I analyze plots all the time.

But it doesn't take a writer to know what a good plot is. If you feel something, if you feel shock and sadness, that is a good story.

Maybe not everyone feels sadness - maybe some people are more sensitive to that kind of storytelling than others.

But very, very little in GW2 has made anyone that I know of feel sad.

I'm still pissed about Tybalt. Not because I want him alive (I MEAN I DO BUT), but because his death was good storytelling. It hit me, it made me cry, and it was excellent.

Nothing has that kind of emotional impact anymore. Even from the get-go, experiences like that were very rare.

It doesn't need to be a sadness. Feeling alive and like you're killing an epic boss during the final boss battle would be fantastic too, but hey, we got Zhaitan.

Mordremoth's fight was more difficult, but it didn't really sink in that we were fighting an elder dragon.

Balthazar's was... mildly better... but mainly because of Balthazar's voice lines. The "Curse you __!" was amazing. I loved that.

 

It's not that they don't have their moments - they do. It's just that the vast majority of the story is bland. You literally get killed by a god and come back to life and all it was was an excuse for Balthazar to get away. Vlast dies, but you haven't even met him yet, only saw him flying around for half a second, so his death means nothing to you. I felt nothing for his death because I didn't know him. Now, that says a fair amount about Vlast, and in a well-told story, it might be a good thing. But in a story that largely makes me feel "meh", I can't defend it as good storytelling, because it just reflects on everything else that's been done.

[Lonami.2987]

I agree that Balthazar shouldn't have died yet. Other MMOS almost never kill the main villain at release, and it works really well. Vlast should have been introduced properly too.

 

The last arc is a mess as well, you just skip through the Desolation. Reeks of cut content.

[kharmin.7683]

> @Erasculio.2914 said:

> Someone said here a while ago, and I agree: it feels like a story written by young people for young people.

It could be argued that this, indeed, is the target audience especially in light of practically everything else in GW2

 

 

[Erasculio.2914]

> @Lonami.2987 said:

> I agree that Balthazar shouldn't have died yet. Other MMOS almost never kill the main villain at release, and it works really well. Vlast should have been introduced properly too.

 

I still think that even Abaddon shouldn't have died. I would love if he had been living all this time as a mostly depowered very old human being, in a quiet corner of the Crystal Desert, with nothing but a cozy home and piles and piles of books.

 

[nembool.5981]

I too have issues with PoF, mostly regarding the portrayal of GW1 favourites, namely Devona, Tahlkora and our GW1 characters.

Devona would never have turned into the Herald of Balthazar - she cared too much about people to murder them senselessly in the manner we see.

Tahlkora's story is even more tragic - left as a motionless husk at the top of the world. Not only does it dump on a much-loved GW1 hero, but it essentially says our GW1 heroes never bothered to help the Sunspears when they were in trouble.

Personally, my head canon says that immediately after beating Abaddon, we hightailed it to Vabbi, cut Palawa Joko into six pieces and buried those pieces in remote locations across the world of Tyria because we knew what an evil smeghead he was.

Anyway, all bad decisions on the part of the writers, most of whom I assume were not working on GW1.

[Erasculio.2914]

> @nembool.5981 said:

> I too have issues with PoF, mostly regarding the portrayal of GW1 favourites, namely Devona, Tahlkora and our GW1 characters.

> Devona would never have turned into the Herald of Balthazar - she cared too much about people to murder them senselessly in the manner we see.

 

:astonished: :astonished: :astonished:

 

I didn't know that was Devona.

 

Wow.

 

I mean, just... Wow.

[serialkicker.5274]

Well, not every character needs to have long and detailed introduction and a lot of "screen time". Some characters are interesting just because of that - we don't know much about them, they are intriguing and mysterious. If we'd seen all gods and chit chat with them like with Balthazar, they would soon become rather boring or feel like nothing special.

[Danikat.8537]

> @kharmin.7683 said:

> > @Erasculio.2914 said:

> > Someone said here a while ago, and I agree: it feels like a story written by young people for young people.

> It could be argued that this, indeed, is the target audience especially in light of practically everything else in GW2

 

Maybe not young people specifically, but definitely impatient people with short attention spans. Anet have periodically tried doing storylines with gradual reveals, where we learn about a characters backstory and motivation over time through a combination of direct confrontations, dialogue with other characters and notes we can discover, but the end result is always players complaining that they story is too long and boring and makes no sense.

 

Look at Season 3 - we must have been told at least 3 times that we couldn't keep killing the dragons because it was destroying Tyria and we had entire story steps devoted to seeing the effect it was having first hand. But we still had players finishing the last episode and then coming to the forum to complain that all of a sudden with zero explanation we're stopping Balthazar from killing the dragons when we should be on his side. And then complaining that they didn't immediately tell us why Balthazar is back in Tyria, what he's planning to do, how he's planning to do it and how we're going to stop him all within the same episode that introduced him, even though the story was obviously building up to PoF so at least some of the plot had to be saved for that.

 

It seems that anything more complicated than "here is the bad guy, here he is doing lots of bad things so you can see he is bad, here you are immediately defeating him so he is clearly dead, aren't you great", is too complicated. Oh, and it needs to be short enough that players can complete the entire thing within a couple of hours or they'll forget what they're doing and why and complain that it doesn't make sense. Which doesn't exactly leave the writers a lot of options for character development or intricate lore.

[Randulf.7614]

> @Danikat.8537 said:

> > @kharmin.7683 said:

> > > @Erasculio.2914 said:

> > > Someone said here a while ago, and I agree: it feels like a story written by young people for young people.

> > It could be argued that this, indeed, is the target audience especially in light of practically everything else in GW2

>

> Maybe not young people specifically, but definitely impatient people with short attention spans. Anet have periodically tried doing storylines with gradual reveals, where we learn about a characters backstory and motivation over time through a combination of direct confrontations, dialogue with other characters and notes we can discover, but the end result is always players complaining that they story is too long and boring and makes no sense.

>

> Look at Season 3 - we must have been told at least 3 times that we couldn't keep killing the dragons because it was destroying Tyria and we had entire story steps devoted to seeing the effect it was having first hand. But we still had players finishing the last episode and then coming to the forum to complain that all of a sudden with zero explanation we're stopping Balthazar from killing the dragons when we should be on his side. And then complaining that they didn't immediately tell us why Balthazar is back in Tyria, what he's planning to do, how he's planning to do it and how we're going to stop him all within the same episode that introduced him, even though the story was obviously building up to PoF so at least some of the plot had to be saved for that.

>

> It seems that anything more complicated than "here is the bad guy, here he is doing lots of bad things so you can see he is bad, here you are immediately defeating him so he is clearly dead, aren't you great", is too complicated. Oh, and it needs to be short enough that players can complete the entire thing within a couple of hours or they'll forget what they're doing and why and complain that it doesn't make sense. Which doesn't exactly leave the writers a lot of options for character development or intricate lore.

 

That is partly down to the release cadence. Having a short chapter every 3 months means not dragging things out - it needs to be to the point (and it doesn't always achieve that as it is now). The GW story has never been more than simple storytelling from the beginning and sometimes it works (NF, EOTN some of the bonus stuff, Head of the Snake) and sometimes it bombs (Factions, LS1, HoT) and that puts the other part of the problem at consistency.

 

I don't think we are ever going to get deep and meaningful story and I don't really expect heroic fantasy (or the GW equivalent) to be such a thing. Fantasy doesn't need always need all those extra dimensions to make it work, in fact it can suffer at times for it. I'd much rather have a simple, straightforward narrative done well than a narrative trying to set up a hundred threads and create deep and meaningful plots and developments and then getting lost along the way as it fails to keep up. At its core, the Personal Story was an attempt at doing it right. The issue was poor dialogue, a lack of polish and short/unengaging gameplay instances to back it up. If the PS was polished to todays standard, it would be arguably their best arc since the franchise began.

[Hyper Cutter.9376]

> @nembool.5981 said:

> Devona would never have turned into the Herald of Balthazar - she cared too much about people to murder them senselessly in the manner we see.

I don't think she really had much of a choice (she explicitly says so outright in the first story instance), and she's pretty clearly not happy about it.

 

> Tahlkora's story is even more tragic - left as a motionless husk at the top of the world. Not only does it dump on a much-loved GW1 hero, but it essentially says our GW1 heroes never bothered to help the Sunspears when they were in trouble.

Our GW1 characters were probably dead by this time, since Tahlkora (who seemed to be significantly younger than you) was an old woman when Joko started conquering Elona. I suspect this was intentional on his part, either out of some sort of twisted respect for the GW1 hero, fear that they'd go Turai Ossa on his ass if he tried anything when they were still around, or both.

[zealex.9410]

> @Erasculio.2914 said:

> There's an interesting [summary of Path of Fire](

) on Reddit. Mostly meant as a joke, but rather accurate as well. Reading it reminded me of one of the things I didn't like about the storyline: it often removed things from the world instead of adding to it. For example...

>

> We heard that Glint had a son before Aurene. That sounds like it could be an interesting story! Where is he?

>

> * Gone. Killed.

>

> So we finally hear about the Human Gods? They have always had very interesting lore. Where are they?

>

> * Gone. Went away from the world (for real this time).

>

> Destiny's Edge used a magical spear made from the dragons to try to kill Kalkratorik. Looks like it could be interesting! Where is it?

>

> * Gone. Destroyed. That part of the storyline was so kitten (not a nice looking kitten, no, one of those evil looking ones) I almost refused to go along with it.

>

> Balthazar, the God of War and Fire, murderer of his father, champion to the humans, possible destroyer of the world. The only one who successfully killed the main character. Sounds like that could be the basis of a long story. Where is he?

>

> * Gone. Dead.

>

> ...I mean... PoF's story is very simple. Someone said here a while ago, and I agree: it feels like a story written by young people for young people. Ignoring the lack of emotional impact (our character dies in one chapter, and in the next is laughing with Canach about getting carried away in pretending to be one of Joko's minion), the storyline managed to make the world of Guild Wars 2 far smaller than it was before PoF.

>

> Imagine the possibilities, for example, if, instead of killing Balthazar, he had been depowered and made a prisioner (before someone says that arresting a NPC is not fit for a PG-13 game, remember Mai Trin and Canach). We would finally have had a moment to give him some depth and allow players to see his point of view. Even the Herald of Balthazar had the beginning of a personality before she, too, was gone.

>

> The storyline could have been a lot better, and a lot deeper, if its answer to character development weren't to remove things and characters from the world.

>

 

Spend a great deal of time getting to know vlast after his death like alot its one of the main parts of the story getti g to know what kind of personality he had how he viewed the world etc.

 

The way the spear was handled make sense if you were to stop someone from doing something lets say your mother from fiding the paper woth your bad grades in it wouldnt it you try to prevent that by making that paper dissapear? Well the pc decided to do the same with the spear as ot apears that killing kralky is out of the picture.

 

The whole gods oarts wasnt handled great imo but ye.

 

Idd the weakest part of the story was Balth from how he was presented in the story to how he was delt with.

 

I agree the story was simply but i must give it credit as it was handled way better than anythkng i played through up until this point.

[Erasculio.2914]

> @Danikat.8537 said:

> Look at Season 3 - we must have been told at least 3 times that we couldn't keep killing the dragons because it was destroying Tyria and we had entire story steps devoted to seeing the effect it was having first hand. But we still had players finishing the last episode and then coming to the forum to complain that all of a sudden with zero explanation we're stopping Balthazar from killing the dragons when we should be on his side. And then complaining that they didn't immediately tell us why Balthazar is back in Tyria, what he's planning to do, how he's planning to do it and how we're going to stop him all within the same episode that introduced him, even though the story was obviously building up to PoF so at least some of the plot had to be saved for that.

 

I disagree. I have read many of those criticisms, and I think they meant the opposite of what you think they said. It was not a matter of not understanding the storyline - rather, of the storyline not making sense and being poorly told. Many of those asking for immediate answers about why Balthazar was back in Tyria knew it was being set as a plot point for later, but they were in a hurry because they were worried ArenaNet was going to just do a massive character assassination and wave the answers away as "because he's evil". Which is pretty much what they did.

 

Many games have far more complex storylines than Guild Wars 2 and are critical successes. Claiming that those who complained about the GW2 storyline did so only because they didn't understand it reeks considerably of condescension.

[nembool.5981]

> @"Hyper Cutter.9376" said:

> > @nembool.5981 said:

> > Devona would never have turned into the Herald of Balthazar - she cared too much about people to murder them senselessly in the manner we see.

> I don't think she really had much of a choice (she explicitly says so outright in the first story instance), and she's pretty clearly not happy about it.

>

> > Tahlkora's story is even more tragic - left as a motionless husk at the top of the world. Not only does it dump on a much-loved GW1 hero, but it essentially says our GW1 heroes never bothered to help the Sunspears when they were in trouble.

> Our GW1 characters were probably dead by this time, since Tahlkora (who seemed to be significantly younger than you) was an old woman when Joko started conquering Elona. I suspect this was intentional on his part, either out of some sort of twisted respect for the GW1 hero, fear that they'd go Turai Ossa on his kitten if he tried anything when they were still around, or both.

 

Devona's words later on suggest that she still retained free will and wanted to disobey Balthazar. The action of NOT disobeying him and murdering innocent civilians when we initially encounter her is utterly out of character, and pretty much paints her as a villian, not a flawed heroine.

As for Tahlkora and our GW1 characters, we all knew Joko would try to conquer Elona again without an Ossa to stand against him. The fact that it happened says that either our GW1 characters never bothered to go back to Elona after Nightfall to see how things were developing and kick Joko's butt OR Arenanet simply discarded any potential ramifications in favour of their canon (which disrespects our efforts in Nightfall - why save Elona from Abaddon, simply to drop it right into Joko's hands?).

[ProtoGunner.4953]

The biggest issue for me which the OP mentioned was that Vlast had no single 'screen time' alive. He just had one action scene. That's a huge miss. I was really excited when they first mentioned Vlast and the only 'talking' we get from him are the vision crystals or what they're called.

[Offair.2563]

We didn't took balthy's head with us as a trophy and to make sure he won't get ressed. Might come back at some point calling us fools for not doing that.

[Cynz.9437]

> @Palador.2170 said:

> > @Downfall.4613 said:

> > > @Kingkiller.9645 said:

> > > I wish we had seriousness in the story. When we came back to life, we should have came back with our friends not knowing we were alive. There should have been consequences. We would come back, spend a couple of chapters away, and then reunite with them while they were confronting Balthazar. Like, "remember me, kitten?".

> >

> > Agreed. You could just completely cut the commanders death from the story and it wouldn't change anything at all. It made no impact whatsoever.

>

> Half true. Our death showed us what was happening with Joko, which nobody even in his own realm knew. We were able to put that knowledge to good use. But there were possibly better ways to have found out about that.

>

> Maybe it will have more impact as the story goes on. I mean, we literally came back from the dead. The Commander may have just shrugged it off, but for him/her in many ways it was a logical flow of events that made sense. For everyone else in the party, it was finding the mangled corpse, trying to come to terms with the fact that they'd lost their leader and friend, only to have the Commander suddenly go from mangled to intact and from dead to very much alive like it was one more thing to check off of the list of chores for the day.

>

> Canach was the one that may be the most shaken by it, I think. Yes, he dismissed it with some snark, but ... does he even get to go to the mists when he dies? He just saw someone in the party he's with die, killed by a (small g) god no less, and come back from it. I think he's finally ready to stop and realize that if he stays with us, he WILL eventually die. Everyone there will. But for him, there may not be a second chance. Thus, the need for some snark to cover himself.

>

> As to the main topic of the thread, I hate that Vlast died before we ever got a chance to know him. But, I think that's for the best. It makes for a better tragic character that way, I think. And as Glint was the dragon Destiny's Edge failed to save, so the new guild has Vlast. We'll get to see if they have us actually carry that burden or not as the story goes on.

 

He would go to the mists. Otherwise all sylvari players would have rather... different LS progression xD

[Vayne.8563]

> @Downfall.4613 said:

> > @Kingkiller.9645 said:

> > I wish we had seriousness in the story. When we came back to life, we should have came back with our friends not knowing we were alive. There should have been consequences. We would come back, spend a couple of chapters away, and then reunite with them while they were confronting Balthazar. Like, "remember me, kitten?".

>

> Agreed. You could just completely cut the commanders death from the story and it wouldn't change anything at all. It made no impact whatsoever.

 

Except for a complete review of everything that's gone on before as you regain your memory in visions. For a lot of people, who don't remember or haven't done it much that could have been very useful.

[CharterforGw.3149]

Your death on PoF in a nutshell:

 

companions: Oh no th commander is dead!

you: Oh, don't worry I'm back. let's go kill balthazar

Companions: Ok, let's go!

 

They aren't shocked, except for a few lines that are supposed to resemble how shocked they are.