[GW2: Path of Fire] Story Thread

[Lotus Victoria]

Hello champions, good to see you. It's been a while since the launch of the new expansion (Path of Fire), so I've decided to make a thread about discussing the new story.

I'd like to ask you some things:

1 - Avoid "free spoilers". If you want to discuss bits of the story, please remember to use the spoiler tag. (Example: Lotus Victoria is the best Asura in this entire forum)

2 - Respect each other. There will be people with different opinions in this thread, so try to remain as civil as possible.

3 - Feel free to speculate on the future of the story. (Remember to use the spoiler tag on the important bits, though!)

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Okay, so I'll be the first one to chat with myself for a bit .

I'm still finishing the story, I've just got into The Desolation and, so far, the story is...okay. I think that it has too much padding, the Riverlands questline was just boring as fuck, and I still think that the HoT story was done better. More was at risk.

Going into Spoiler Territory, so, IF YOU DIDN'T PLAY THE CAMPAIGN YET, DO NOT READ THE LINES BELOW!
I really really liked the idea of the commander dying. It came out of nowhere, but it was pretty cool in my opinion. The only thing that I didn't like was the fight itself: Balthazar just...appears. Out of nowhere. BOOO, TIME TO DIE.

But fighting with yourself to recover your name, and then reliving your memories was pretty cool. Too bad the achievment bugged out for me, and I got really pissed.

[Svifnymr]

It'd probably work better if there was a time-gate for spoilers, otherwise it's silly. Especially since spoiler tags that don't tell what part they're about are a little useless.

I didn't mind Balth killing Commander, it was the idea that you need to wear him down to 20% before he kills you. It was a huge time waster. Same with Soul Eater, it's just a stupid encounter IMO. Reliving the past was fun enough, but I do wonder how much changes between alts. Balthazar just knowing where you were going to be, meeting you there ahead of your comrades? Silly.

Aurene flying across all of Tyria during the battle? Unforgivably dumb.

Also, Destiny's Edge teamed up with Glint, who had forged a spear to slay Kralkatorik. They stunned/mc'd him, but Logan ran off to save Jenna, so the Branded over ran and killed Snaff. Kralk got free and killed Glint. Glint could not see past her death. We then killed 2 dragons, unleashing great amounts of magic.

The exalted in the lost city explains to you that Glint saw what happened with the 2 dragons deaths and knew that the real path was to contain/redirect the magic and thus she knew that none of the dragons should be killed. This doesn't sync with the above at all. Glint was dead before Zhaitan and Mord, didn't see their deaths, and her entire plan was to kill Kralk.


It also felt like the Exalted should have made some kind of reference to Gleam/Vlast, but maybe I just missed it. The relationship between the Zephyrites and Exalted should be fleshed out a little more too.

[PACOX]

typing in lowercase because i dont want to plug in my keyboard.

the overall feel of the story felt good. like if everything was just based on visuals and music it would been amazing. my issue is with the writing and ultimate conclusion of the story. actually maybe not so much the writing, i just know what to expect from anet.

some examples


it was cool how glint had another baby and apparently he did a lot of stuff. his appearance was cool, dumb how he died shortly after even learning about him. all the cool stuff about him comes after the fact and through a lot of supplemental information.

cool how joko was a part of the story. the awakened are a cool faction. shitty how they wrong him out for obvious reasons (he gets freed after the story)

where were brahman (or whatever the assholes name is i dont like him but he shouldve been in the story), rox, and majory?

the whole into the mist and kormir scene were cool if you didnt listen to the dialog...so the gods straight abandoned humanity and kormir was just chilling to tell someone? and they left nothing to help clean up their mess? not even tips on how to contain the dragons?

the last mission was EPIC...if you excuse how long the last fight was (i know why they did it that way though because players would complain if the final fight was actually challenging...see previous final story missions). i felt like they kind of blindsided us with the who killing balth and not killing kalk really didnt do shit because kalk ended with aurene and absorbing balths powers...

again, the theme and feel felt amazing, writing not so much





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It also felt like the Exalted should have made some kind of reference to Gleam/Vlast, but maybe I just missed it. The relationship between the Zephyrites and Exalted should be fleshed out a little more too.
[/spoiler]

they did, you had to listen to all the messages or do you mean the exalted in HoT?

[Svifnymr]

Yeah, I meant Tarir should have made some reference to Gleam while we were discussing the egg, or training young Aurene. At some point, the egg was entrusted to the Zephyrites, who then started off on their journey. Not sure if they had the egg since Glint died, or had just gotten it when Season2 started. Not sure why they built Tarir over by Mordremoth.

There's a camp that used to be Zephyrites, they talk about them leaving, but there's no real info on anything there either.

[Deleted]

The story is shit.

Sorry, but as a guild wars 1 player I couldn't describe it in other words.

[Lotus Victoria]

The story is shit.

Sorry, but as a guild wars 1 player I couldn't describe it in other words.

I've been hearing that quite a lot in-game, and I suppose it's true. I took a look at the GW1's story, and it looks a lot better, even to this day. I hate the fact that they just throw away exposition like you know everything, instead of taking the time to create the "world building" necessary to engross a player in the atmosphere. I know who Palawa Joko is because I've read in the wiki, but everybody keeps telling me HOW DANGEROUS PALAWA JOKO IS, OH MY GOD!

Newer players must think that he's some kind of new villain or something like that. That, and the fact that the storytelling in the xpac has been okay at best and really bad at it's worst. What a shame.

[Svifnymr]

I'm not sure GW1 was that great of storytelling either, but I certainly enjoyed it.

Not sure if folks played SW:TOR, but the original story is very well catered to the individual, with a lot of nuances. Sure you all ended up at the end, but even just Sith recognizing your race was a nice touch. Then Makeb, two stories (Empire/ Republic) with no individualism. Then Revan, one story with minor variations (single class quest), then fuck it, you're all the same story.

GW2, races each get their own stories, but profession doesn't matter. Builds to a common storyline with some variations at level 30. After that you're lucky if you get a toss off line to recognize the individual pasts. Why does Taimi report to Phlunt rather than the Snaff Savant of Synergetics?

I mean, I can understand that my brand new alt that hasn't done any of the seasons or even HoT story will still get a memory of their battle with Scarlett, sure. But plenty of plot threads are just discarded, maybe we shouldn't bump into Malyck when fighting Mordremoth, but there weren't even any other TREES!

GW:EN introduced heroes from all places (Tyria, Cantha, Elona) to Asura/ Norn, I guess. Still seems odd that the Elonians are comfortable with Charr or Sylvari.

[Rivellana]

From the perspective of a player who did not play GW1 so did not know the lore associated with it, and played GW2 from launch on and off but always as new living story sections came out...I have enjoyed the PoF story more than any other story in GW2 so far. Particularly more than HoT, which was kinda crap.

And in regards to the comment that said players will complain if they make the final fight too long? I'm not so sure that's true, if you're referencing the Mordremoth fight anyways. The reason people complained about that fight is the number of ridiculous bugs in that fight that they never bothered (AND STILL HAVEN'T BOTHERED) fixing. At least, that's why I hated that fight so much.

You're all bashing on the PoF story, but yeah, not everyone hates it.

[BurningSkies2018]

I don't know if it's the mounts clouding my vision or not - but.. I enjoyed the story a hell of a lot more than I did HOT. Albeit.. that may be as a result of my huge distaste for the map design in heart of thorns, and how once I finished the story I lived in WVW and couldn't be bothered going back and doing shit-all with that.

This time around I was actually excited to go and play it. Sure some things were a little off that had been mentioned above, but my overall enjoyment? I feel it was worth my time, and look forward to more.

After Balthazar, I had to look away from the computer for a few minutes because that fight was brutal on my eyes with all of the stuff going on lol.

[Svifnymr]

And in regards to the comment that said players will complain if they make the final fight too long? I'm not so sure that's true, if you're referencing the Mordremoth fight anyways. The reason people complained about that fight is the number of ridiculous bugs in that fight that they never bothered (AND STILL HAVEN'T BOTHERED) fixing. At least, that's why I hated that fight so much.

Some folks will complain about things either way, but yeah, the issue with Mordremoth was the nature of the fights. I just redid it on a couple alts before PoF, half glitched. The fights are still not fun though, they're just long. Plus, since the start, Anet has a real problem with saving progression in an instance. You crash, you start over.

Really though, Mordremoth's fight was cool. You kill the Mouth with massive efforts and finish the brain, big and little strikes.

Zhaitan was actually similar, you take out a bunch of his minions, roll armies up to his doors, recover all the temples, restore the spring of Orr, then battle him with an armada of airships. It wasn't as personal with the airships, and it was slow and tedious. It was amusing when the fleet got destroyed by Mordremoth, since they sailed over there with no prep work and got shot down.

Overall I liked PoF, and same with HoT and the seasons. But there are plenty of glaring errors. The dialogue also gets dumb sometimes, having no control over your characters choices.

[Rivellana]

Some folks will complain about things either way, but yeah, the issue with Mordremoth was the nature of the fights. I just redid it on a couple alts before PoF, half glitched. The fights are still not fun though, they're just long. Plus, since the start, Anet has a real problem with saving progression in an instance. You crash, you start over.

I avoided doing story as much as I could after I did it once in HoT because I didn't find it fun, but when I was waiting for PoF to come out I was working on the leystone armor collection for the free ascended armor piece and since I didn't want to collect 100 crystalline ore by farming Dragon's Stand I figured I might as well do the story on an alt and collect a legging box, so I went through and tried to do the final instance by myself on my dragonhunter just a week or so before PoF launch. I could have done it just fine, but about the time I needed to take the second updraft, it bugged out and decided to launch me straight up and out of the instance and tell me well tough crap you've left the instance, you get to restart it now. I was NOT happy.

It just reminded me back when HoT launched, the very first week I had to do it multiple times and with multiple groups because of bugs, because back then if the instance owner died, they'd get sent to the penalty box but not be able to leave it to deliver the final blow to him when it the time came. Bugs, bugs everywhere that they had time to fix but they never fixed them all.

And on my dragonhunter...I got a group of guildies to help me out just in case, and one of my guildies got launched out of the instance instead of me. >.>

As far as stories go, I tend to like it when Anet does things like add the little things...making sure if your character is the right type of race, character story line, etc. they will get that added to their story. Honestly that was the best part of playing through the HoT story line as a sylvari, the rest of it was meh, and especially as other races.

As far as PoF story?
My character is a human female and I didn't even remember until she went to fight Balthazar but they added a line for her that was something like "I enjoyed so many blessings from you throughout my lifetime" when she is addressing him before fighting that made me do a double take, and sure enough, I looked at her character creation story and I had chosen him as her patron god. That's the kind of little details I love it when they add.

[Svifnymr]

In Dry Top's intro, they had some nice call outs for Engineers even. Sylvari definetly got some extras during HoT, but other Pale Trees were just missing, it was disappointing.

[Tekkommo]

I thought the story was fine, albeit too short. I expected it to be longer.

Had its funny moments which I like.

[Deleted]

Has anybody absorbed Balth's powers after his death? I know he has been weakened and "stripped off his god powers" but in GW1, after we defeated Abaddon, Kormir had to absorb his powers or they would destroy Tyria. Maybe other gods have transfered Balth's powers to someone else before imprisoning him?

[Svifnymr]

It sort of appears Kralkatorik did. I don't think it's "god aspected" though, it's just pure power. It's also possible Aurene did, since we don't know what happened with her.

[Deleted]

I see. Thanks for answer!

[PACOX]

the commander should just kill all the gods and dragons to become the most powerful being in tyria

[Lotus Victoria]

the commander should just kill all the gods and dragons to become the most powerful being in tyria

I'd really dislike the story's if it went this way. I finished it today and I gotta say, I don't know where to go next. Okay, we killed two dragons, we killed a god, now we'll probably kill a dragon with the power of a god. Then what?

I mean, it's nice and all, but I really wish the story was a bit more "grounded". The most interesting aspects of GW2's story, at least for me, happened in small places, during chapters of the living story. Investigating small locales, and learning more about the histories of some places.

[Solidito]

I'd really dislike the story's if it went this way. I finished it today and I gotta say, I don't know where to go next. Okay, we killed two dragons, we killed a god, now we'll probably kill a dragon with the power of a god. Then what?

I mean, it's nice and all, but I really wish the story was a bit more "grounded". The most interesting aspects of GW2's story, at least for me, happened in small places, during chapters of the living story. Investigating small locales, and learning more about the histories of some places.

Well I suspect the Living Story will probably focus on Joko for a while, with what happened when you left him in his cage, and then using his armies etc. I think he'll be the focus for the first season just like Scarlet was

[PACOX]

Well I suspect the Living Story will probably focus on Joko for a while, with what happened when you left him in his cage, and then using his armies etc. I think he'll be the focus for the first season just like Scarlet was

Yeah, it will definity probably be the Commander vs Joko with a lot of lore mixed into it.