Legend builder, its implications in the world of tyria, its people and the gameplay it could create.

Im refering to the collection for the legacy of the colossus the new torch in case anyone is confused. The collection i found sweet short and really interesting. The npc goes over alot of this but ill focus on 1 since i see potential in this.

Im talking about the few lines that refers to the norn, how he was fascinated by their ideals, their way of thinking and how he wanted to get closer to them. From his line we see that he was very interested in the norns, this isnt anything new, multiple characters have shown interest for diff cultures but he specifically wanted to take a spet further. He wanted to do things that norn do for example use their magic and transform.

Now this is really interesting to me. For the majority of the game pretty much all the races bar the sylvari have been pretty closely tied to their culture. Humans and their gods, char and their firepower and faith in themselves above other beings, the norn with the spirits, the asura and their magitech centered lifestyle and their belief in the eternal alchemy etc. U'd rarely if ever see a human show that much interest to the culture and beliefs of other races and vice versa. A big character we saw that actually followed the same path as the npc here is Scarlet with her obsession over knowledge and how it led her into finishing all the colleges of the asura something that its generally pretty asura exclusive.

This imo is untapped potential that gw2 could benefit from exploring, the idea of ppl immersing themselves more in diff cultures and not have this black and white stance on who believes in what. Much like actual ppl i want to believe that characters in the world of tyria could be free to pursuit knowledge beyond that of their race.

And now im gonna shamelessly add my idea on how this could translate into gameplay and enhance existing systems.

Imo much like in gw1 if a player chooses so they should be able to become accostumed with the other races, gain reputation and be allowed into their secrets with the result of them unlocking the racials of said races. I personally feel that it was done pretty well in gw1, u had reputations which by doing deeds for the races u increased said reputations with reward being unlocking their racials. In gw2 terms this could be done by introducing tyria mastery lines (one for each race) that step by step allow the player to use that race's racials.

We already have racials which to some extend are pretty intersting skills, i personally really like the asura ones. As of rn their are deliberately underpowered because they're limited to each class. Gw1 embraced the idea of humans unlocking these and they balanced them accordingly. Theres bound to be some scepticism about whether we need even more spells to keep track of but hear me out. These arent elite specs, we prob never gonna see a new race being added and if we do i really doubt we will be getting a new race every expac. Even if we did a new race brings 5 (or 6 idk) racials with it which is like 1/9 of the skills that we get to the game with elite specs, furthermore i feel like anet generally does a good job balancing stuff thats universal across the game and their small pool size couple with the fact that these are available to all like every class having an evade a heal skills etc would allow them to be in a good spot balance wise without major issues.

Ideally this would be a free update to the core game but i could see it comming as a main future in a future expansion. I just thought id share it because we call alot of subjects "beating a dead horse" but anet has worked on some of those things i never thought they would (mounts, revisiting uw (although not to the extend i would like)) and this collection reminded me of the racials.