[SPOILERS ahead] Where did we meet Vlast?

I just finished living world season 3 AFTER doing PoF. Playing PoF I felt how I'm seriously out of the loop and that playing things in order is simply a must.

One of the most notable examples was the one mission where the dragon Vlast just suddenly appeared and everyone seemed to know who he was - and basically just died right after appearing. Also we were told Aurene threw a fit over her brother's death (me assuming they met).

And then I go through all of prior content and Vlast is nowhere to be seen and all we do with Aurene before PoF is that one bonding mission.

Am I missing something?

Is this a repetition of the whole order-mentor-death-we-should-care-about?

As I remember it Vast was supposed to be a surprise to our characters and to players. He did actually appear in a side-mission in GW1 (he was called Gleam back then) but then disappeared for a few hundred years before reappearing in Elona to fight the branded. Like mounts he's one of those things everyone in Elona just knows and everyone from Tyria was going "Wait...you have a what?" when they found out.

I don't think Aurene ever actually met him, but all the crystal dragons have some psychic powers, and of course all the dragons are sensitive to magical bursts like the death of a highly magical creature, so it's possible she felt his death and knew what it was even without having met him. (And I can imagine thinking you're alone in the world, then finding out you had a brother only at the moment of his death would upset you.)

I was disappointed that he was killed off so quickly though. I kind-of understand it because he could easily have made Aurene redundant (which would be disappointing after all the build up) and/or made fighting Balthazar and the Forged seem far less of a challenge, but IMO there are other ways that could have been handled - like Vlast declaring he doesn't work with others, or he has his own priorities.

You learn about vlast in the first map during act 1. The ppl of amnoon tell u about what the dragon has been up to and u go off to find him.

@"Danikat.8537" said:I was disappointed that he was killed off so quickly though. I kind-of understand it because he could easily have made Aurene redundant (which would be disappointing after all the build up) and/or made fighting Balthazar and the Forged seem far less of a challenge, but IMO there are other ways that could have been handled - like Vlast declaring he doesn't work with others, or he has his own priorities.

There's too much of those "introduce something people asked about just to have it removed right after" things going around lately. Way, way too much. It's as if Anet was actually afraid to have any unresolved and open hooks from gw1 left lying around and wanted to get rid of all of them.

It's really, really sad when your world has a long and colorful lore to draw on, and all you can think about is how to remove elements from it.

@Astralporing.1957 said:It's as if Anet was actually afraid to have any unresolved and open hooks from gw1 left lying around and wanted to get rid of all of them.

Imagine then what a thorn in their foot Cantha must be xD

They're probably thinking hard how to have Kralkatorrik fly to Cantha nowadays

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@"Danikat.8537" said:I was disappointed that he was killed off so quickly though. I kind-of understand it because he could easily have made Aurene redundant (which would be disappointing after all the build up) and/or made fighting Balthazar and the Forged seem far less of a challenge, but IMO there are other ways that could have been handled - like Vlast declaring he doesn't work with others, or he has his own priorities.

I think they're in a lose/lose situation there. If there's any unresolved plot threads from any point in the story some people will complain that it's been forgotten or abandoned and sometimes even accuse them of being incompetent. But they couldn't possibly have every single thing which isn't dead/destroyed in every storyline. And then if they introduce new elements and immediately resolve them other people are unhappy.

I have to admit my preference is definitely to leave things hanging. IMO it's realistic - sometimes you don't know what happened to a person or event after you stopped being directly involved, even if it was big news. And with historical things it's even more common, there's all kinds of unexplained events or things which conflicting contemporary accounts where we may never know exactly what the truth is. But I understand that some people don't like that in fiction, where it can be avoided.

Although I do wonder if Anet did what they did with Malyck and his tree more often - where they told us they didn't follow it up because they didn't have the time and resources to do it justice - would people accept that?

@Danikat.8537 said:Although I do wonder if Anet did what they did with Malyck and his tree more often - where they told us they didn't follow it up because they didn't have the time and resources to do it justice - would people accept that?Anything is better than Anet bringing back things just to remove them. If people ask for something to be brought back, it's not because they want that something written out of the game.

If you'll forgive a bit of pedantry, we never actually meet Vlast. We were told that he was the egg/baby rescued by the GW1 heroes in Glint's Lair, and learned about him in the interest of creating and understanding our growing relationship with Aurene. But we never really encounter Vlast until his one appearance, and his fly-over is hardly a meeting. It's like saying you met a celebrity because you saw them in an airport and they looked at you.

We do know, however, that Vlast had a telepathic connection to both Kralkatorrik and Aurene, similar to the Sylvari and the Pale Tree sharing connections with each other and with Mordremoth. We know Vlast shared his experiences with Aurene and vice versa, and that he possessed Glint's powers of prophecy, so he was already very familiar with us by the time we get to Elona. Granted, I also would've liked to spend more time with him personally, but the "Obi-wan Kenobi" (Citizen Kane?) style interactions with him are suitably new and different for the series.