[PoF Spoilers] Feels like a cop out if this is it

To keep it short, the story had a good and exciting start, but when it started to be about the human gods, it just felt like a giant cop out to make the human gods just "leave forever and leave everything to the races of Tyria."

Almost so forcefully that it felt like ArenaNet didn't want to write anything more about the gods and just kept pointing the fingers towards the Elder Dragons.

If this is seriously it about the human gods, and they are now gone from the story permanently, consider me very disappointed.

Doing the final fight against Balthazar pretty much all alone, and knowing what Kormir said before that "oh no we can't take part because when gods fight gods something like Crystal Desert will happen" felt like a lame jab when I, a single human with a powered up sword could beat Balthazar, but the other gods just had to hurry the f-away and leave forever.

They want to remove human supremacy from the old GW1, so they want to erase the gods completely. Make them utterly irrelevant so we can be this cosmopolitan kumbaya peace pipe circle of the races getting all perfectly along together. What an outrageous butchering they've done of Balthazar's character. It frees them to tell their race neutral stories without worrying how a story with the gods might clash with their precious charr narratives.

Their solutions don't even make sense. The gods want to avoid conflict with the dragons to avoid the destruction of Tyria, but they leave Tyria on their own at the mercy of the awakened elder dragons. It's such a stupid storyline.

They basically made Balthazar into Abbadon 2.0.

And in the process make the "commander" this supernatural demigod capable of smiting gods and elder dragons on his own. It's a trope in MMO's nowadays where they feel the need to make the player character the most powerful person in the room. I don't like it.

What's laughable is they said the clash within the gods would destroy the entire area, and yet Balthazar was secretly vanquished and imprisoned without worldly consequences in the mists.

Much like with the Mursaat, the writers are in a hurry to bury all GW1 story threads so their can make their brand new ones. Lazarus the Dire, more powerful than any of the raid bosses, summarily killed in a short living story episode battle. And the mursaat are erased just like that.

Kormir's voice was horrendous. That does not sound like Kormir, at all. Kormir's voice was older and more gravely; this one sounds like female human NPC #2645374

Honestly, I expected absolutely nothing. Had zero expectations and I wasn't disappointed. Well, maybe a little.

But let's face the reality, GW1 players probably form only a little fraction of the player base and wast majority couldn't care any less what they did to GW1 lore, as long as it halfway decent, not blatantly awful.

@Nick.6972 said:Honestly, I expected absolutely nothing. Had zero expectations and I wasn't disappointed. Well, maybe a little.

But let's face the reality, GW1 players probably form only a little fraction of the player base and wast majority couldn't care any less what they did to GW1 lore, as long as it halfway decent, not blatantly awful.

To me, it just felt like new writers for the ArenaNet team didn't want to work on the "old stuff" anymore, and decided to write a very forced "closure" which just opened up even more questions, to then have the characters just awkwardly accept it, and continue to accept it throughout the rest of the story, and then downright destroy Balthazar, to again write in the Elder Dragons as the new hottest thing, again. Sadly, the Elder Dragons are never, and will never be as mystical, interesting as the human gods, no matter how much you try to write in to the story how "immensely more powerful the dragons are than the gods."

I seriously hope, so much, that this is not a way to permanently remove the gods from the story.

I really wish we got a chance to see the Gods...mainly Lyssa. When I got the story mission to go into the mists and to see them, I was beyond excited and was smiling as I impatiently tried to figure out that damn puzzle to open the portal.

Then once I entered inside, there’s Kormir...............

And what made it worse was her reminiscing about when she STOLE our godhood from us. :angry:

@Tseison.4659 said:I really wish we got a chance to see the Gods...mainly Lyssa. When I got the story mission to go into the mists and to see them, I was beyond excited and was smiling as I impatiently tried to figure out that kitten puzzle to open the portal.

Then once I entered inside, there’s Kormir...............

And what made it worse was her reminiscing about when she STOLE our godhood from us. :angry:

The sour part for me is that it was so hamfisted that they were leaving.

"Yeah no, we can't do anything, gods can't fight gods. Can't do anything about Balthazar.""Yeah no... we can't do anything there, we can't help you with Elder Dragons.""No no, everyone has already left, and I will be leaving now too."

Such a hamfisted way of the writers to discard old stories because they don't want to write any more about it. To then trying to force the Elder Dragons on to us even more and how much more special they are.

Absolutely no closure or a conclusion, just left with even more questions.

ArenaNet boasted how unique their take on the story will be, that we truly won't know what the story will be about or what will be happening, that it's all so unpredictable. But it was the other way around... people predicted this the moment Balthazar was revealed, it was such a lame take on a story that had so much more potential. It was again just all about killing a god trying to kill an Elder Dragon, for then us to deal with an Elder Dragon.

ArenaNet just wanted to delete the gods from the story as fast as possible and try to call that the closure. One god killed by mortal hands, five just leaving forever without no real reason.

Man, I haven'y played PoF yet but this is disappointing. When will they realize that dragons are uninteresting and they just had a chance to improve the story with the gods but decided they would rather persist with their terrible writing. The dragons have about as much personality and motives as a natural disaster... they don't. They seem to only act based on pure instinct. The gods could have added twists, alliances, and some sense of mystery.

@Farzo.8410 said:

@Tseison.4659 said:I really wish we got a chance to see the Gods...mainly Lyssa. When I got the story mission to go into the mists and to see them, I was beyond excited and was smiling as I impatiently tried to figure out that kitten puzzle to open the portal.

Then once I entered inside, there’s Kormir...............

And what made it worse was her reminiscing about when she STOLE our godhood from us. :angry:

I agree. It was VERY disheartening when Kormir stated that they were leaving FOREVER. That really pissed me off and it was very VERY lazy writing.

They might as well have not existed entirely BUT then a part of me looks at it in resemblance to Dr. Manhattan who left because he was bored. Maybe the human gods did not want to deal with the responsibility and not so much the “consiquences” - which I for one don’t think a god would just give up and cower away like that.

But what’s done is done now I guess. The part where Kormir also stated that the blessings of all the gods will be with her (them) seems ridundent too since they’re presence is pretty much diminished and praying to them would be a waste since they pretty much don’t want anything to do with Tyria...

I’m still mad that they didn’t show us the rest of the gods.... it would’ve been nice to see what they looked like, they’re regalia and then just have it as a uniform so we can might as well be them >.>

The real plot hole is kormir saying them imprisioned/stripped balthazar(and aparently was very easy), and saying later that gods cant infigthing themselves without cause big harm to the world.

@Zenith.7301 said:What's laughable is they said the clash within the gods would destroy the entire area, and yet Balthazar was secretly vanquished and imprisoned without worldly consequences in the mists.Now this one, I don't have a problem with. Open war between powerful beings like the Six and the Elder Dragons would indeed lead to Desolation-levels of destruction, but Balthazar was stripped of his power more like a prisoner stripped of his belongings. There was no battle because they did it before he had a chance to strike back.Much like with the Mursaat, the writers are in a hurry to bury all GW1 story threads so their can make their brand new ones. Lazarus the Dire, more powerful than any of the raid bosses, summarily killed in a short living story episode battle. And the mursaat are erased just like that.The mursaat were a dying race the instant the Titans were released. Lazarus was the last one, and while his fight might've been less epic told in a Living World episode instead of a Raid wing, I'd have hardly called it easy. Then again, many of the Day 1 patch battles have to be retuned later due to difficulty. coughCAUDECUScough The problem isn't so much that he was killed off, but that it was just Livia and the Commander, and not a big group. It even had phase changes, as the various aspects were defeated.

A big cop out and I really hope they go back and revise that.This is just disapointing (the instance was cool, though)

They could have easily said, that with the disturbance in the mana flow, they can't expend any help, as they try to keep the balance. Bam, no write off, they are still there, but unable to help, till we mortals bring the things back into balance.

However, no, they give us a brief cameo and the others are gone, even though it could have been the perfect time (more so with the follow up situation) to let us see multiple. I don't get it. Such a great opportunity, great build up, awesome set-pieces, only to be driven into the next wall.

• How did they strip Balthazar?
• Where are they going?
• Who is the next God of War/Fire?
• Who contains his power?
• Why do they have to go? They can't help because of colleteral damage, but what if they are just there? They can still do their job.
• What was even their purpose then? Beside bringing humans to Tyria and controling magic? They had jobs to do.
• They could still help us with knowledge. They don't have to get involved beyond that.

I am not done with the story, but Balthazars story is just as generic as it can get till now. I don't believe we get any twist anyway, so I can appearently safely say. Disappointing.

Just finished the story.What a fucking disappointment. Butchered past lore (literally and figuratively...RIP Vlast for the 1 second of screen time), constant twists and turns that have ZERO impact on the story (What in the world was the point of dying and venturing through the mists??), and just pure stupidity, like people here have already mentioned with the gods not being able to help us.What a waste.... Whole expansion has been a let down, only slightly redeeming quality was mounts.

did you hear nothing of the dialogue?the gods were already reluctantly absent in gw1 because their presence brought a lot more chaos than good,

@Ayakaru.6583 said:did you hear nothing of the dialogue?the gods were already reluctantly absent in gw1 because their presence brought a lot more chaos than good,

Yes I heard the dialogue, and its false.... anyone who played GW1 for a decent amount of time would know that. They had a lot of influence back then and would project themselves and lend us power very often.

@Johnny.1634 said:

@Ayakaru.6583 said:did you hear nothing of the dialogue?the gods were already reluctantly absent in gw1 because their presence brought a lot more chaos than good,

To be fair, we never saw them, but their emissaries.Though we fought alongside Grenth, if I am not mistaken.People would be blind if they saw the real gods. Like we did in this instance, which was a nice touch.

I feel like we should just write off gw2 lore and pretend it isn't canon. They are basically writing off all the past lore as being insignificant. Makes me wonder why they are even using the guild wars name anymore. Just call it dragon wars or some lame shit like that.

@Farzo.8410 said:To keep it short, the story had a good and exciting start, but when it started to be about the human gods, it just felt like a giant cop out to make the human gods just "leave forever and leave everything to the races of Tyria."

Almost so forcefully that it felt like ArenaNet didn't want to write anything more about the gods and just kept pointing the fingers towards the Elder Dragons.

If this is seriously it about the human gods, and they are now gone from the story permanently, consider me very disappointed.

Doing the final fight against Balthazar pretty much all alone, and knowing what Kormir said before that "oh no we can't take part because when gods fight gods something like Crystal Desert will happen" felt like a lame jab when I, a single human with a powered up sword could beat Balthazar, but the other gods just had to hurry the f-away and leave forever.

You have multiple post saying negative things about the story. Yet, nowhere do you say what you would do differently. So, what would you have done differently?

Given the sad excuse of a treatment some of the icons of GW1 got in GW2 (Lazarus and Muursat as whole, Vlast/Gleam), that felt like rushed "lets get rid of them to get them out of the way", instead of developing their stories, I really wouldn't put it past Anet writers being simply bored of writing for the game. It feels like their good writers got fired and replaced with some illiterate mongrels. But as some have noticed, I am a minority being GW1 fanboy and how well written it was. It created some iconic characters that at this point are being shat on, gods being among them.

Reading through this thread and hearing everything about how much of GW1 was basically stomped on to get Path of Fire to happen, I don't think I have any interest left in getting it.

My only reasons were (maybe) Firebrand and nostalgia for the Elonian regions, which were so absolutely beautiful back in the day.

I guess I could always just fire up GW1 again and go play instead, huh ... :\

The weird thing to me was how Kormir implied they would have helped with Balthazar, but he was disguised as Lazarus at the time, so they didn't realize they needed to help before departing. In other words, since Kormir hadn't left yet, it seems like she should have been perfectly capable and willing to assist with Balthazar, just not Kralkatorrik. Of course, that's the kind of thing a couple of tiny dialogue changes could have fixed, so it's not a big deal to me (for instance, have her explain that her preparations to leave are already in progress and she can't stay even if she wanted to).

This does sort of feel like they're writing the gods out, but I'm not convinced. They were certainly willing to show us the gods more than ever, have the other races interact with them, and show that Grenth has domain over the other races as well, regardless of what they believe.

I think the Five now plus Aurene would make pretty good replacements for the Elder Dragons that would hopefully be willing to share their power to achieve the balance we're seeking.

@Jokubas.4265 said:The weird thing to me was how Kormir implied they would have helped with Balthazar, but he was disguised as Lazarus at the time, so they didn't realize they needed to help before departing. In other words, since Kormir hadn't left yet, it seems like she should have been perfectly capable and willing to assist with Balthazar, just not Kralkatorrik.

I'm reading into things here, but what I got from that is that five gods vs. one depowered ex-god would've been a safe intervention, but that with Balthazar fueled up by a bloodstone and two separate elder dragons, and with Kormir being the only one left, the chance to intervene without cataclysmic collateral damage had passed.

On the wider questions here regarding the 'for your own good' rationale:We don't know that the other five didn't fight Balthazar in the Mists. Kormir glossed over it, but she also simplified a lot of other things to get her point across. It might be that 'stripping him of his title' involved the kind of catastrophe that would've wrecked a part of Tyria... but could be safely carried out in the Mists, where there were no innocent bystanders. In the cutscene where we saw Rytlock find Balthazar, it certainly looked like the place had been wrecked, and specifically, scorched.If you go into the hidden room, you can find Kormir's journal. In it, she pretty explicitly lays out that the Six, knowing what they know, believe Tyria is a lost cause whatever they might do now. Intervening becomes less important, because they believe there's no real way to save us; there's just a choice between the apocalypse happening now (god-on-god fight), in a little bit (Balthazar left unchecked to kill Elder Dragons), or later (no gods, just dragons). It also alludes to the gods having greater responsibilities, with Tyria being an unsuitable distraction.

Granted, that still leaves plenty of questions: why aren't the gods evacuating Tyria, the way they apparently did to bring humans here in the first place? Why can't they come back once they leave? Why are they also leaving their realms in the Mists behind? What is it that's so important that they'd abandon everything that we've seen them involved in? But there's a difference between unanswered questions, plot holes, and retcons. I'm not entirely comfortable with trusting ANet's motives yet, but I feel like their execution really wasn't that bad.

@DarcShriek.5829 said:

@Farzo.8410 said:To keep it short, the story had a good and exciting start, but when it started to be about the human gods, it just felt like a giant cop out to make the human gods just "leave forever and leave everything to the races of Tyria."

Almost so forcefully that it felt like ArenaNet didn't want to write anything more about the gods and just kept pointing the fingers towards the Elder Dragons.

If this is seriously

it

about the human gods, and they are now gone from the story permanently, consider me very disappointed.

Doing the final fight against Balthazar pretty much all alone, and knowing what Kormir said before that "oh no we can't take part because when gods fight gods something like Crystal Desert will happen" felt like a lame jab when I, a single human with a powered up sword could beat Balthazar, but the other gods just had to hurry the f-away and leave forever.

I'm not the story writer, so I'm giving ArenaNet critique of what I thought about the story. Story is not something they can retcon however they want, so whatever I say what I should have done, they can't take it into consideration. My onle gripe with the story was how the gods were handles, both Balthazar and the other five.

I can list a few things.

The gods shouldn't leave Tyria, especially not Kormir. Tyria is her home, and she fought for it in GW1 to save it.Balthazar shouldn't have been killed so quickly and so easily as he was, or he shouldn't have been killed at all.

But it's so blatantly obvious how ArenaNet forcefully wished to write the gods off the story permanently.

And now we have a whole race butchered up, where the "blessed by the gods" decision makes no sense anymore.

It's possible it's a trick so we're surprised if they show up again. And you'll be even happier

@Fenom.9457 said:It's possible it's a trick so we're surprised if they show up again. And you'll be even happier

If anything I hope for the sake of this game's franchise and overall lore you're right...

What ArenaNet did with the gods this expansion pack is like building a whole city, and then 10 years later remove the pillars which were the buildings. Pretending to call it a city when it's just one empty storehouse left.

You don't simply remove the pillars of the whole Guild Wars story because you want to focus on something else, because it's "new."

The gods were tied in to so much, making them leave permanently is a huge middle finger.

Well.. I think we can disregard anything kormir does, anyway

heh..