Arn't MOST saga's trilogies?

JpDelano.2580 · August 30, 2019

So if you take the basic concept of what a saga is, i think it ends up in a trilogy in most cases. If thats the case then we have another expansion coming out because most things are done in 3's when it comes to movies etc... Just a thought anyway. However just the fact that they said saga could also mean it goes way past three, because its not a trilogy. It could mean that it goes into earlier years of the game. So for example, they tie it all up and you get the end, then the next expansion is actually what happened before or during or whenever. I think they have plenty to do and as they said they have to finish up the story before they can move on.

Randulf.7614 · August 30, 2019

A saga has precisely nothing to do with trilogies whatsoever - that is a Hollywoodisation of the word

Sagas are historically associated with Norse/Viking/Icelandic stories, so it was a natural fit to take a Norn based story arc and call it a saga

Danikat.8537 · August 30, 2019

> @"Randulf.7614" said:

> A saga has precisely nothing to do with trilogies whatsoever - that is a Hollywoodisation of the word

>

> Sagas are historically associated with Norse/Viking/Icelandic stories, so it was a natural fit to take a Norn based story arc and call it a saga

Agreed. In general terms a saga is a very long story. The word originally referred to Norse and Germanic historical stories (although the historical accuracy of many of them is debated), it's since been expanded to other types of stories.

One common example is a family saga - stories which span multiple generations of a family - in the sense that the 'first generation' of characters start out as children/young adults and the story covers them growing up and having kids and their kids involvement, not simply a story where multiple generations of a family appear. Star Wars is a saga in that sense because the prequels deal with Anakin Skywalker (and to a lesser extent his mother), the original movies deal with his children, and the newest ones feature his grandson. (And if you go into the Expanded Universe stuff it goes even further.)

In modern terms it's used as pretty much a generic term for "story we want to sound long and epic" which is where you get things like any trilogy getting called a saga. But that's not really accurate.

I suspect that is the meaning here however. Calling it a saga is a way of saying this is supposed to be more than "just" a living world season. What exactly that means is unclear at this point, although the announcement implies they're going back to some of the original Living World ideas with things developing over time and having players revisit locations and even enemies instead of each map being frozen at a point in time. It could also mean it's longer than a typical season, but we don't know yet and likely won't know until much later on (like if/when episode 9 is released).

Although, with the multiple mentions of Braham - son of a Destiny's Edge member - and the talk about Rytlock and his cubs (I think?) - it's possible they're going down the family saga route. Although not in the conventional sense, since a story about children born after the start of the story growing up and taking a lead role doesn't fit with a mortal main character who has to personally witness all these events.

Bast.7253 · August 31, 2019

I think they chose to label this as a Saga for no other reason than, as someone else mentioned in another thread, "rebranding." They likely have no plans for the future, and instead of it being a living season, the new living story will just be one extremely long running living story season, that's now called a Saga, so they can change it up how they see fit. They want to be able to change it from the expected format of a new map and story, to, sometimes something added to a map and story driven, to minor story progression with focuses on quality of life updates.

Whether that means less frequent updates pushed into one to seem more robust, or more frequent updates to keep the game feeling more alive and people logging in for purchasing gem store items, who knows.

But I would say this is probably just a way to rebrand living story into a way to space it out more, minimize expectations, and push the game one step closer to maintenance mode.