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Braham can have redemption and become interesting.


ugrakarma.9416

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About the new trailer:

I hate this character since the non-sense* they put on LS3, and even worst, on LS4 he became a regretful crybaby only got worse.

Im tired of this all ice thing, if he embrace primordus and start a rampage, he will have a redemption and become glorious, even better if Ryland die at his hands. After that he kill primordus itself and using his power become new god of war and fire.

*The LS3 Braham is non-sense, because at end of Hot, he almost hang out with us, and we helped him avenge his mother, we killed both the Faolain and the Fat Mordy.

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@ugrakarma.9416 said:About the new trailer:

I hate this character since the non-sense* they droped on LS3, and even worst, on LS4 he became a regretful crybaby only got worse.

Im tired of this all ice thing, if he embrace primordus and start a rampage, he will have a redemption and become glorious, even better if Ryland die at his hands. After that he kill primordus itself and using his power become new god of war and fire.

*The LS3 Braham is non-sense, because at end of Hot, he almost hang out with us, and we helped him avenge his mother, we killed both the Faolain and the Fat Mordy.

I never quite understood the hate for certain characters in this game including Braham, I personally like the character.

I guess Anet did their job if they made a character that gives such an emotional response from players rather then apathy.

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@Tyson.5160 said:

@ugrakarma.9416 said:About the new trailer:

I hate this character since the non-sense* they droped on LS3, and even worst, on LS4 he became a regretful crybaby only got worse.

Im tired of this all ice thing, if he embrace primordus and start a rampage, he will have a redemption and become glorious, even better if Ryland die at his hands. After that he kill primordus itself and using his power become new god of war and fire.

*The LS3 Braham is non-sense, because at end of Hot, he almost hang out with us, and we helped him avenge his mother, we killed both the Faolain and the Fat Mordy.

I never quite understood the hate for certain characters in this game including Braham, I personally like the character.

I never disliked him either. He's not one of my favourites, but they achieved what they set out for him and he's had a fair amount of character development. I tend to notice more interest in those who get less attention though. My only negative is how his use of the bow was relegated to a terrible, throwaway cutscene, but that's less to do with the character and just poor writing in general

I guess Anet did their job if they made a character that gives such an emotional response from players rather then apathy.

Agreed and I believe Anet have said this themselves in the past. Many writers will say that love/hate a character, if they're generating a discussion and illiciting an emotional response, then they are happy

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@"The Greyhawk.9107" said:I myself am not on board with this level of hate that a vocal portion of the playerbase has for Braham, but I do think he's been heavily misshandled by the writers.

I kind of blame how certain people only like a character if they are naturally awesome and highly skilled combat characters who always provide something useful like they are living plot armors.

A lot of hate towards Braham is literally towards how he is a angry teenager and these people that hate him may assume they would handle his situation better than him. Of course they are saying "I would have gotten over this" and etc because they are using our world's standards and not GW2 world standards where Braham literally is a Teenager thrown in a journey to save the world because his friends, family, and neighbors were constantly being murdered, corrupted, or etc by Elder Dragon Minions almost everyday of his life, had his own mother die right in front of him when after all these years since his birth he finally got a chance to be a family with her for maybe only a few months, and thrown into basically constant global disasters caused by beings of greater power.

It is amazing Braham manage to keep this much of his sanity living in a life like this.

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The same people who hate Braham tend to hate Taimi too, and pretty much every other major character. Frankly, I have never felt overly affectionate for anyone in the cast, but the reverse is also true -- there's not really anything to hate either. In the end the characters could be a lot more interesting, but I feel one of Icebrood Saga's strength has been to make a lot of these characters feel more compelling to me.

If you could somehow get everyone in the playerbase to vote on how they feel about Braham, I think the vast majority would either like him or feel pretty neutral about him. It's just a vocal minority you see online that truly hate Braham/others. Braham is fine. While he -- and other characters -- could have benefited from better writing there's nothing really wrong with him either. I wouldn't be sad to see him exit the main cast though, one way or another.

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The Braham experience certainly is a thing.

I mean, he is an experience. He has a strong enough sense of identity, good humour, and yet he's vexingly gullible. He can allow himself to become propagandised by his own emotions, which is a frustrating facet of his character. Despite this, I like him. Always did, liked him back when it was cool to hate him and I was the outsider. I can both see a character's flaws and be fond of them regardless. Perfection is a myth.

Taimi I adore—she's very relatable. All in all, a compassionate empath who fakes confidence to get by. Generally mistaken for a narcissist for that reason. Why I love her is that her compassion is founded upon her logic, she thinks about things, considers and analyses them more deeply than most of Dragon's Watch. I feel that Taimi would understand agency versus sacrifice.

That's something that a lot of characters in Guild Wars 2 struggle with.

I think that's why, thus far, Taimi hasn't thought of Jormag as evil. I look at it this way too—if I were a dragon with ice powers and I knew that the peoples of a certain region were about to die by fire and their own fear having them stampede, I'd put them all in cryostasis too. Just put them all in a safe place, figure out the rest when it's actually safe for them to return. Elliot Tolliver as the Superior Spider-Man did a similar thing to save an entire city from frost giants.

As such, Taimi might actually be my favourite Dragon's Watch character right now. I never saw that coming. Suffice it to say, I don't hate Taimi. Not even a little bit. I don't hate Braham, either. He's just... He's a gullible teenager following his emotions wherever they lead him. He needs to do what he needs to do, that's how one arrives at wisdom.

I'm not sure there's a Dragon's Watch character I actually dislike??? I wasn't a fan of Kasmeer's wishy-washiness in Path of Fire but they seem to be doing better now.

Outside of Dragon's Watch, it's the dragons I adore the most, most certainly. Oh, they're far more interesting to me. Well, not so much Primordus as he's being an abusive psychopath right now but hopefully that's just Torment? Hopefully.

(Yes I'm still grumpy that most people don't understand sacrifice versus agency and I can't help but segue into it. Sorry.)

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@EdwinLi.1284 said:

@"The Greyhawk.9107" said:I myself am not on board with this level of hate that a vocal portion of the playerbase has for Braham, but I do think he's been heavily misshandled by the writers.

I kind of blame how certain people only like a character if they are naturally awesome and highly skilled combat characters who always provide something useful like they are living plot armors.

A lot of hate towards Braham is literally towards how he is a angry teenager and these people that hate him may assume they would handle his situation better than him. Of course they are saying "I would have gotten over this" and etc because they are using our world's standards and not GW2 world standards where Braham literally is a Teenager thrown in a journey to save the world because his friends, family, and neighbors were constantly being murdered, corrupted, or etc by Elder Dragon Minions almost everyday of his life, had his own mother die right in front of him when after all these years since his birth he finally got a chance to be a family with her for maybe only a few months, and thrown into basically constant global disasters caused by beings of greater power.

It is amazing Braham manage to keep this much of his sanity living in a life like this.

Well said.

I think it's a good point to note his age, I think a lot of people tend to forget how young he actually is due to his size and appearance.He was 17 when we first meet him in LWS1 and only 19 when his mother was murdered in front of him in HoT.He's only 25 now in the present day as well.

It's probably a minor thing too but Norn have naturally longer lifespans than humans do as well so factor that in and you could still probably claim that Braham is very young for a Norn.. and just as you said too, he's dealt with far more kitten in his life than most have.. including many of those in the same universe as well.

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@Raizel.1839 said:Braham can have redemption...and then die.

it seems better to me.the worst PNJ I've ever met in 16 years of guild wars, even kormir on gw1 was more bearable (which is a feat)primordius does not deserve to be associated with this horrible characterthe only positive side is that we may soon be able to kill him ourselves and that's just great

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@The Greyhawk.9107 said:You people scare me. With the way some of you talk about Braham you'd think he was going around eating babies and/or other similarly henious crimes.

Meh that is just normal behavior in my opinion when it comes to certain people hating on a character in a storyline.

Some may depend the character to leave the story, some want them to leave the story in very painful way, and some just demand the death of a character they dislike under the crime of just because they dislike the character due to not meeting standards of always being likeable and useful majority of the time. Almost as if the only characters they will accept to stay alive are people who are Yes man to the Main Character/Player character of the story.

It is why there will always be a certain number of people who follow any type of story will always expect death penalty for any form of harm or disagreement towards the Main Character of the story no matter how small or large the incident is.

Death always seem to be their solution to characters they dislike in a storyline even if the character is a good person but maybe acting out due to personal issues related to or unrelated to the situation.

It does worry me sometimes as well since even if these type of people may deny it since they only wish these results to fictional characters, they may have some darker emotions inside themselves they are suppressing involving people they may meet everyday.

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@EdwinLi.1284 said:

@"The Greyhawk.9107" said:You people scare me. With the way some of you talk about Braham you'd think he was going around eating babies and/or other similarly henious crimes.

Meh that is just normal behavior in my opinion when it comes to certain people hating on a character in a storyline.

Some may depend the character to leave the story, some want them to leave the story in very painful way, and some just demand the death of a character they dislike under the crime of just because they dislike the character due to not meeting standards of always being likeable and useful majority of the time. Almost as if the only characters they will accept to stay alive are people who are Yes man to the Main Character/Player character of the story.

It is why there will always be a certain number of people who follow any type of story will always expect death penalty for any form of harm or disagreement towards the Main Character of the story no matter how small or large the incident is.

Death always seem to be their solution to characters they dislike in a storyline even if the character is a good person but maybe acting out due to personal issues related to or unrelated to the situation.

It does worry me sometimes as well since even if these type of people may deny it since they only wish these results to fictional characters, they may have some darker emotions inside themselves they are suppressing involving people they may meet everyday.

I can't agree that this is at all "normal" behavior. Increasingly common perhaps, but not at all normal.

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@"The Greyhawk.9107" said:You people scare me. With the way some of you talk about Braham you'd think he was going around eating babies and/or other similarly henious crimes.

Yeah, never got that, either.Braham is one of the most fleshed out characters, with own goals and convictions. He isn't a simple "Yes"- Man and will be contrarian if something doesn't line up with his opinion. I've seen people call that crying, but it just isn't.

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@The Greyhawk.9107 said:

@The Greyhawk.9107 said:You people scare me. With the way some of you talk about Braham you'd think he was going around eating babies and/or other similarly henious crimes.

Meh that is just normal behavior in my opinion when it comes to certain people hating on a character in a storyline.

Some may depend the character to leave the story, some want them to leave the story in very painful way, and some just demand the death of a character they dislike under the crime of just because they dislike the character due to not meeting standards of always being likeable and useful majority of the time. Almost as if the only characters they will accept to stay alive are people who are Yes man to the Main Character/Player character of the story.

It is why there will always be a certain number of people who follow any type of story will always expect death penalty for any form of harm or disagreement towards the Main Character of the story no matter how small or large the incident is.

Death always seem to be their solution to characters they dislike in a storyline even if the character is a good person but maybe acting out due to personal issues related to or unrelated to the situation.

It does worry me sometimes as well since even if these type of people may deny it since they only wish these results to fictional characters, they may have some darker emotions inside themselves they are suppressing involving people they may meet everyday.

I can't agree that this is at all "normal" behavior. Increasingly common perhaps, but not at all normal.

@Raknar.4735 said:

@The Greyhawk.9107 said:You people scare me. With the way some of you talk about Braham you'd think he was going around eating babies and/or other similarly henious crimes.

Yeah, never got that, either.Braham is one of the most fleshed out characters, with own goals and convictions. He isn't a simple "Yes"- Man and will be contrarian if something doesn't line up with his opinion. I've seen people call that crying, but it just isn't.

It is mostly a effect of how people have gotten too use to stories where the Main Character/Player Character is always the one person who can resolve everything to the best outcome and everyone else will fail or not produce the desired outcome. Not to mention how these types of stories always portray other characters as Yes-man to the Main Character because he or she is the "chosen one" of the story and only he or she can resolve anything properly.

This does go back to how GW2 story started as well since it did start with this concept in Zhaitan Arc.

The Zhaitan Arc basically constantly made the story partly focused on how only the Commander can resolve any issues with the best result and anyone else always failed or produce the least desired result even if they completed the mission in the Commander's place. Thus expectations were setup to a point that only the commander can produce the desired result and anyone who disagree with the Commander or don't follow the Commander are in the way, annoying, or useless.

Trahearne may have been a character who produced a near result for a mission due to always planning out who gets involved and have to use a bit more resources since he knows without the Commander a mission will be hard fought but the story back then lacked greatly on showing that Trahearne put such effort in since they never showed how helpful he was on the political side of the story that allowed the Commander to be so free from his position as the Commander of the Pact and always have allies to be by the Commander's side during a mission. A lot of focus was on the Commander's perspective of events which did lead to people believing Trahearne stole credit from the Commander when the reality is that both Trahearne and the Commander contributed to the war in their own way where Trehearne dealt with the politics that always allowed the Commander to have allies, resources, and options for his or her missions and the Commander dealt with the more direct assaults in the War since Trehearne knows the Commander prefers to be on the frontlines over behind a desk dealing with politics.

If the story had established that there can be other characters who produce the same result of the Commander but have to put in more effort and resources without needing to depend on the Commander during the Zhaitan Arc then we may not have such a heavy dislike for the Dragon's Watch characters though some people have grown to like certain members overtime the more they willing got to know these characters.

This is where all these goes back to Braham because unlike most characters, Braham is not like most characters. He has his own personal issues that are not easily resolved by the Commander because these issues are his own, he does not give into the mentality of always praising the Commander simply because the Commander is the greatest Hero to the public knowledge, and he does not expect the Commander to resolve all his personal issues for him. If anything, he probably has a bit of realitic mentality compared to other NPCs which is why I don't hate him due to understanding that his life has always been far out of control but I can't really like him either since he has not fully resolved himself on who he wants to be yet.

If anything, I think the relationship between the Commander and Braham has been a bit of a reality check on the Commander's life. Not everyone is going to be a Yes-man to the Commander and not everyone needs to be only friends with the commander simply because he or she is famous. For the Commander and Braham, their friendship is built more on treating each other as normal people over the fame that the Commander earned thus Braham has been one of the most honest with the Commander than most characters in the storyline.

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My problem with Braham's Season 3 arc does not come from his canonical age and the attitudes that come with it but from him making a near 180 in personality from the HoT epilogue dialogue at the Heart of Thorns tree (Mordremoth's base of operations).

Braham: Another victory! They're adding up. Jormag's next on the docket, right?
Player: A little rest might be in order first, don't you think?
Braham: Rest? I'm not resting until all the Elder Dragons are dead. Eir helped you kill Zhaitan. It's up to me to help you take down the rest. I see that now, and I'm ready.
Player: Eir would be proud of you. But, we have to rest before charging back in.
Braham: We have a good guild. There's nothing we can't do if we put our minds to it. I suppose we've earned a little break, but hopefully not too long.
Player: I'm sure trouble will find us before too much time has passed, my friend. (Source)

In that HoT dialogue Braham had come to terms with Eir's fate and was thankful that he had contributed to Mordremoth's demise and thus avenged his mom. He thanked the Commander for being a good friend and leading a good guild. While he was willing to take the fight to Jormag, he wasn't being antsy about it and was willing to let the party rest before we planned our next move. All in all, Braham and the Commander parted ways on good terms at the end of HoT, and Braham certainly didn't blame the Commander for indirectly causing Eir's death back then.

As we entered Season 3, one year had canonically passed since HoT ending (as partly revealed in the raid journals that bridge the gap between HoT and S3). While this big timejump happened and we had to wait for living world content longer than usual because of ANet having to plot out PoF plot from scratch as they hadn't even plotted out S3 due to rushing HoT out, as revealed in

with PoF story developers, it still made it weird to me that it took an entire year to have a vigil for Eir and for the Commander to do anything noteworthy. Why weren't there any clues that Braham might have called the Commander to figure out whether to tackle Jormag or some other dragon next, why did Braham instead choose to act on his own over the year between HoT and S3 and disregard the teachings of his totem spirit Wolf (who promotes working as a pack rather than as a lone wolf)?

During that time Braham suddenly began mourning Eir again and vented his frustrations on icebrood in the north. While he arranged a vigil for Eir as revealed in the "Eir's Memorial at Hoelbrak" instance, he didn't even bother attending it, instead believing that he was wasting precious time by not finding a means to find a way to damage the fang and thus end Jormag. He decided to rather study old scrolls and chat with scholars about Asgeir and the jotun scrolls than honor the legend of his mom, basically spitting on Eir's memory. For norn, their legend is everything, and Braham should've at least stopped by during the vigil to pay his respects for his mom and keep her legend alive via a speech to Eir's assembled friends before leaving for the north again. His absence was rather jarring given the way norn tend to honor their dead.

What's even worse is that Braham had been so focused on finding a means to end Jormag that he had left Garm wandering in the jungle for that entire year without ever bothering to find his mom's wolf companion and bring him home. It was Rox who had to brave the unhinged Mordrem and other dangers of the jungle to finally find the severely weakened Garm and return with him to Hoelbrak. In the ice cave, Braham coldly ordered Garm to follow him after defeating the icebrood beast, not even seeming to care that much about Rox having been the one to rescue the wolf to begin with. Poor Garm was so confused that he followed Braham's orders, likely out of respect for him being his alpha Eir's son.

In the ice cave, Braham's recklessness to rush in got Rox frozen (which may in fact be a weaker form of the Frozen effect on Lake Doric and Snowden Drifts DRM victims), which nearly spelled her doom. Once the icebrood had been defeated and Rox thawed, Braham didn't even bother apologizing to her for putting her in danger. What makes this even more annoying to me is that Rox, in contrast, had sacrificed a promising career in the Stone Warband by choosing to tend to Braham (whose recklessness had injured him when he had charged at Scarlet Briar) rather than carrying out Rytlock's order to finish off Scarlet during Season 1 despite knowing that she'd have to live with the shame of not fulfilling her mission and continuing to live as the social pariah status of gladium. Rox had risked everything a charr holds dear for her friend Braham, and she didn't even get an apology when his recklessness led her to even more perils in the ice cave.

Out of all of this, what does make sense to me is Braham's tantrum towards the Commander about forming a new guild, and him abandoning the norn guild in the Far Shiverpeaks in shame after Jormag had seemingly become unreachable and he had thus failed to fulfill his promise at the end of S3. While his reasoning for the Commander causing Eir's death was erroneous as he himself had previously come to terms with Eir's death and had thanked the Commander for allowing him to avenge her (which he seemed to have conveniently forgotten by S3 time), he did have a point about the Commander dishonoring Eir's legacy by starting a new guild.

While I understand the OOC reason for replacing Destiny's Edge with Dragon's Watch due to player complaints about DE at the time, lorewise this shift didn't need to happen. In Tyria, guilds are known to add new recruits to their roster, and the Commander was DE's latest member as of the end of personal story. It made no sense for Rytlock to just disband the guild when he could've just suggested that the Commander invite "Dragon's Watch" over to boost DE ranks instead. Braham calling out the Commander on supporting Rytlock's weird decision was thus justified even though it's odd that Braham never chewed out Rytlock, the true mastermind, about it.

While I understand that the OOC reason for Braham's tantrum was for the story devs to leave the Commander by themself before they would leave for Elona to confront Balthazar seemingly alone in the "darkest moment" in the narrative, it was unfortunate that it came with disregarding HoT epilogue dialogue with Braham. Not only did he disrespect Eir by not attending her vigil to honor and pass on her legend, he mistreated both Garm and Rox with an unapologetic attitude, and disrespected Wolf by abandoning the spirit's teachings of loyalty and working as a pact.

Now that the Icebrood Saga revealed that Braham's norn guild friends weren't a toxic influence on him either to justify his odd change in character, the one way the devs could still reconcile HoT and S3 Braham with one another (why he dishonored Wolf, Eir, Garm, Rox and Commander) was if Jormag had become aware of Braham's presence during Season 3 (perhaps since the cracking of the fang if Jormag could sense it; at least the Spirits became aware of Braham being the norn of prophecy at that moment so it wouldn't surprise me if the same happened to Jormag who is also aware of the prophecy) and began manipulating him by bringing out his worse side with subtle manipulations. Once Jormag had been forced back to pre-awakening levels at the end of S3, Braham could begin mending his relationship with the Commander as the dragon was no longer subtly influencing him as shown in Season 4.

Perhaps Jormag sensed Braham potentially being the norn of prophecy since the cracking of the fang and wanted him to rush to the dragon so Jormag could corrupt Braham via the persuasive powers (as they seem to be setting something up for the two in the saga given Braham's speculations on why Jormag decided to spare him despite being aware of the prophecy linking the two of them) as well as remove the scroll-enchanted bow from the equation that way.

It would explain Braham suddenly getting more aggressive over the year despite previously being at peace with his mom's fate, why he disrespected Eir and disregarded both his totem spirit's teachings and his friends, and it would also flesh out Jormag's chessmaster qualities and that the dragon has been eyeing Braham for quite some time now ever since Season 3, which might see development in later Icebrood Saga episodes. After all, Jormag chose to spare Braham in "Voice in the Deep" despite being aware of the prophecy, so I'm guessing Jormag may need Braham due to his connection to the spirits and how it may tie to Primordus if hints in Champions Chapter 3: Balance trailer are anything to go by.

Still, I hope we get to hear Braham apologize to Rox about his mistreatment of her in S3 one day unless that apology happened off screen during "War Eternal". A great moment for such a reconciliation (which we weren't allowed to see due to War Eternal's limited budget) is now at hand as we saw Rox and the Olmakhan returning to the fray in Chapter 3. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, and I hope we get to learn that Jormag may have been manipulating Braham longer than we realize. :)

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@"Kossage.9072" said:My problem with Braham's Season 3 arc does not come from his canonical age and the attitudes that come with it but from him making a near 180 in personality from the HoT epilogue dialogue at the Heart of Thorns tree (Mordremoth's base of operations).

Braham:
Another victory! They're adding up. Jormag's next on the docket, right?

Player:
A little rest might be in order first, don't you think?

Braham:
Rest? I'm not resting until all the Elder Dragons are dead. Eir helped you kill Zhaitan. It's up to me to help you take down the rest. I see that now, and I'm ready.

Player:
Eir would be proud of you. But, we have to rest before charging back in.

Braham:
We have a good guild. There's nothing we can't do if we put our minds to it. I suppose we've earned a little break, but hopefully not too long.

Player:
I'm sure trouble will find us before too much time has passed, my friend.

In that HoT dialogue Braham had come to terms with Eir's fate and was thankful that he had contributed to Mordremoth's demise and thus avenged his mom. He thanked the Commander for being a good friend and leading a good guild. While he was willing to take the fight to Jormag, he wasn't being antsy about it and was willing to let the party rest before we planned our next move. All in all, Braham and the Commander parted ways on good terms at the end of HoT, and Braham certainly didn't blame the Commander for indirectly causing Eir's death back then.

U summed up very well. i used harsh word, just to add a bit of fun lolz... but the LS3 Braham feels like it come from nothing.

Worst of all, hes didnt attend his mother funeral. if hes so embraced of her mother legend he should be there hes wasnt, we(commander) are there.

In personal history its implied that recount a Legend when a Norm pass away is a extremy important Norm tradition, so we are again honouring Eir.

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As Kossage had suggested above, we were encroaching on Jormag’s territory during Season 3, it would make sense if Jormag did toss some persuasion magic Braham’s way, especially when looking back on how both Crecia and Rytlock got into a frenzy during the battle with Drakkar using Persuasion magic.

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I swear if they took his divisive character and build him up into a more likable character only to kill him off in this clymax ima be majorly disappointed. Anet did the same with Blish and they would rather go with the easy route of making likable/ intruiging/interesting characters and then just kill them instead of letting them interact with us and develop over the years.

Its safe, non ambitious writting and exists to collect some cheap feels imo.

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