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On the season 4 finale "War Eternal", Canach did not have a single word to say with everything that just happened or throughout all the episodes.

Did Canach had anything on his scripts in this episodes? Why did he had no interactions or nothing to say?

Also since Aurene can talk on her own now will Caithe's branding/connection with Aurene come to any use on the future in the story? ( you can be vague )

Who is E.? I still wonder...

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  • ArenaNet Staff

I really love your collaboration with VA team (and every other), but Eve Eschenbacher and you put together in one livestream is just the best thing ever.Just saying. :)

I appreciate that. :-) Eve has sadly (for us) now moved on to Bethesda (as the world’s biggest Fallout fan, it’s pretty much like she’s gone to Valhalla) and we miss her terribly, even as we’re happy for her. Definitely a fun person to do Guild Chat with. :D

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What's going on with the mordrem commanders from HoT? Specifically Adryn with his seer-evocative design and Hareth with his decidedly norn sounding name/build? My impression has always been that they're not mordrem in the same way that sylvari were corrupted into mordrem guard, but are probably more similar to previously living species (Hareth perhaps being a plantified norn for instance) that got assimilated in the same way that those mordrem wolves with regular dog skulls did, whatever it may be. Alternatively, are they just big mordrem that happen to have maverick fashion sense?Also, what was actually going to happen to logan and zojja had they been left in blighting pods? would they have been turned into similar beings?

It's understandable if nobody on hand can actually answer those questions considering how old that content is, but as an alternate: Have there ever been talks of updating old content where plot threads were dropped (ala dutchess chrysantha, the pre-PoF sidestory content, ALTAR OF GLAUST?) in some sort of current events-style release, or does most of your effort need to be focused on 'fresh' content to keep the narrative moving? It's somewhat hard to imagine guild wars 2 actually releasing purely narrative content in the game itself rather than on those dope sidestory posts you did leading into episode 6, but I think I can speak for pretty much everybody when I say an update to some of those old HoT story threads would be really cool.

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I really love your collaboration with VA team (and every other), but Eve Eschenbacher and you put together in one livestream is just the best thing ever.Just saying. :)

I appreciate that. :-) Eve has sadly (for us) now moved on to Bethesda (as the world’s biggest Fallout fan, it’s pretty much like she’s gone to Valhalla) and we miss her terribly, even as we’re happy for her. Definitely a fun person to do Guild Chat with. :D

Oh, good for her!

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@"Ayalet.4970" said:On the season 4 finale "War Eternal", Canach did not have a single word to say with everything that just happened or throughout all the episodes.

Did Canach had anything on his scripts in this episodes? Why did he had no interactions or nothing to say?

Also since Aurene can talk on her own now will Caithe's branding/connection with Aurene come to any use on the future in the story? ( you can be vague )

Who is E.? I still wonder...

I think he was anxious... He probably gambled a lot on the Commander killing Kralk, and when Aurene died, and then suddenly resurrected --- "What will I do with all those money?"

Maybe he even won the whole Crystal Desert and Elona? ;)

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@Tom Abernathy.5893 said:

@Edelweiss.4261 said:I'm not sure if this can be answered, but here goes. Back toward the beginning of GW2's life, I remember reading that the Elder Dragons were supposed to be more along the lines of forces of nature(and thus incomprehensible to mortals). With Mordremoth and Kralk, it feels like there was a shift away from this concept as both have very human aspects(pride and fear/familial love respectively). Was this intended from the start or did the plan change somewhere along the way?

The way we’re currently thinking of it is that, pre-Aurene, mortals understandably perceived Elder Dragons in the way you mention, thinking of them as forces of nature—but that our principal characters inevitably have seen Aurene as a person (if you follow the distinction I’m making), as well as Glint, Vlast, and even, most recently, Kralkatorrik. As a result, they’re re-examining some of their long-held assumptions. For example, all Tyrians used to refer to an Elder Dragon as “it”; as they get more visibility into the inner life of Elder Dragons, some Tyrians are coming to refer to them with gendered pronouns where appropriate.

(In all candor, treating the EDs as people rather than impersonal forces also allows us to therefore use them as actual characters in our storytelling. A hurricane doesn’t have motivation or reason or emotion or a soul; a character does, and is thus a kitten of a lot more useful from a storytelling perspective.)

I'm torn on that. Useful maybe, but over humanising them (as I felt Kralk was at the end) diminishes their presence and power significantly. I'm certainly a minority, but I preferred them as predominantly forces of nature to be overcome. Not everything needs to be layered

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@Ayalet.4970 said:Who is E.? I still wonder...

I echo this but I know you can't tell us that answer in this context. However, would you be able to let us know that E is a plot thread you will one day address? And, reaching for even more all greedy like, do -you- know who E is. Even if you can't/won't reveal his identity for a long time, are you at least writing E-related stuff in the knowledge of who he is?

I mean I know it's Lord Faren. That's my lore hill to die on. But is E going to have more story impact and maybe one day be outed?

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Not wanting to dig up the past, but I personally love the style the original personal story with its branching storyline, the same as I used to love storybooks that let you pick your story as you read through it. And albeit that this obviously has its limitations, and unlikely to return in the shape of the vanilla personal story.. I would like to ask: Where can we expect some sort of storytelling, (or gameplay) where our characters take more control over their own narrative. In order to avoid the feeling that I occasionally felt where our character's are mostly along for the ride, rather than actually in leading, especially with the last episodes, where we really don't seem to be in control of Aurene and we just have to follow where she goes. And similarly the story of the Skyscales where Gorrik is just directing us around seemingly aimlessly.

Basically, do you guys have any tricks up your sleeves, that could give us more of the impression that we're directing where the story goes, and that the commander is the one planning out his/her next few steps?

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It seems like it must be difficult to "world-build" and tell the story of the Commander hurtling from one confrontation to the next at the same time. How do you use the open world maps to advance the story, and how do you decide which maps are going to be a "battlefield" vs. more leisurely exploration/lore building maps?

And to push that question further than I can probably get away with...

We've had a lot of open world maps where nearly everything happening on the map was directly related to the current conflict. In contrast, the non-living world maps (core Tyria, especially) can do a lot of heavy world building because they aren't so focused on driving the plot forward. I think this is also part of the appeal behind expansions vs. Living world for some players, more, I don't know what to call it, "horizontal" storytelling? Is there any possibility of introducing new maps simply for the purpose of expanding the world, rather than centering each new map around the Commander's story?

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Hi - I had a question about folding dungeons into story content. It seems to me that story-driven dungeons (similar to the classic ones but maybe not as large), rather than being a separate system maintained by a different team, would be something that were periodically created as part of the living world episodes. This was in fact done during LW1 with the Molten Facility and Aetherblade, which were unfortunately folded into FotM later, which I didn't see as the best solution (LW1 should really be edited and restored at some point, with these locations brought back into the world as instanced LW content).

The story comes packaged with a lot of instanced content, but, after season 1, there's never been a proper dungeon created in this way to my knowledge. This seems like a wasted opportunity - especially since the original dungeons were sort of created as story content to supplement the Personal story. This could have added a lot of richness to both the HoT and PoF zones.

Is this something that's ever discussed?

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A couple of questions:

1.What was the thought process behind having a "meaningful character deaths" panel after ep5 regarding the death aurene only to have her back in action in the first 5 minutes of ep6? Doesnt that kinda devalue the whole "meaningful" part? (not trying to be a kitten, just curious on the thought process)

2.Looking back at it would you have done smth regarding her death and revival differently?

And finally, the concept of her resurection for many ppl ended up not being quite the surprise some (maybe you guys and gals too) whould've hoped for. Alot of us found the implications of her eating Joko so clear that were expecting her to die past that point.

3.Do you believe it was the right call to make her imminent revival thanks to eating joko so clear for tho who paid attention to the story? Do you think that could've been handled differently? Maybe in a less apparent way?

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  • ArenaNet Staff

@Naxos.2503 said:Who is the absolute gem that is responsible for writing all those Rytlock and Canach dialogues ? :D

It generally depends on which episode you're looking at, but everything goes through the writers' room and table reads--so the truth is it could be anybody, or multiple people if a line has been iterated on (and they often are).

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Some questions to whoever may answer:

1) Had you full creativity freedom, what would you do story wise? Would you bring another unseen menace? Would you bring back something from the original game? Introduce a deuteragonist?

2) About the process. Could you give us an overall glance on how the magic works? Are you guys given a strong guideline/ hook ( for example: The dwarves are back) and then build upon it or the team just brainstorm until something gets greenlit?

3) I personally believe story is always the first step, then the rest of the team (art and tech guys) work together to "translate" the story into content. Is something like that?

4) Who are your favorite writers?

5) How difficult/different is to write for games compared to write other stuff (to say novels, short stories, etc..)

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Man oh man have I been waiting for a thread like this! I've got a mess of questions on a single subject that I've been itching to get an answer for since "All or Nothing."

What's goin' on in the (after)lives of all the new ghosts that fled from The Mists and are now hanging around Tyria? Do they all go back to The Mists now that things have (presumably) settled down over there? Do they have to go back, or could some make the choice to hang around on Tyria proper? If they can stay, are they bound to wherever they are in Tyria, or can they travel around the realm as they please? Are The Mist Wardens here in the realm to stay, or are they going to go back to The Mists now that their work here is done?

Obviously, if these are things we are going to explore in-game the future, it can be left until then, but I'm rather curious to see how these "refugees" from The Mists might find their way into Tyrian society.

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@"Randulf.7614" said:Has there been any seeds towards the new content in either the open world, cities or festivals (incl the current one)? I'm not asking for what they are, but seeding clues used to be a fun thing players used to look for before an episode, but that seems to have dried up. Is there anything added that we can go and hunt for that might give us some early in game clues? Ambient dialogue, map changes and so forth

We plan pretty far out and, because we can only fit so much into any given release, we have to make very deliberate choices about what we include. In an earlier GuildChat I think we said something to the effect of: "Everything is intentional." That still holds true. We don't want to send anybody spinning down a rabbit hole, but...

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@Ayalet.4970 said:Also since Aurene can talk on her own now will Caithe's branding/connection with Aurene come to any use on the future in the story? ( you can be vague )

They've actually talked about this on the GChat spoiler show for War Eternal! If memory serves, they said that her connection is still preset with Aurene even though Aurene can speak for herself, and that we may not have seen the last of this connection being used just yet.

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@Julia Nardin.9824 said:

@"Randulf.7614" said:Has there been any seeds towards the new content in either the open world, cities or festivals (incl the current one)? I'm not asking for what they are, but seeding clues used to be a fun thing players used to look for before an episode, but that seems to have dried up. Is there anything added that we can go and hunt for that might give us some early in game clues? Ambient dialogue, map changes and so forth

We plan pretty far out and, because we can only fit so much into any given release, we have to make very deliberate choices about what we include. In an earlier GuildChat I think we said something to the effect of: "Everything is intentional." That still holds true. We don't want to send anybody spinning down a rabbit hole, but...

Soo...there are.....some....clues.........somewhere?

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Canach's strange silence in S4E6 has already been brought up, so... hmm...

  • What's your favorite plot point that never made it into the game?
  • Are there any characters you just don't "get" and how do you overcome that if you need to write them?
  • If you could bring home any ranger pet from the game, which one would it be?
  • Where on Tyria did Faren get that ridiculous - but magnificent - armor?
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