Pyreo.8517

Is this generally where people are giving feedback? I hope so. Mine's not about the map mechanics, which I think are fine as much as I've seen. It's good to do something a bit different. I'm definitely not saying I'm disappointed, and I really liked the intrigue factor as things got worse and worse. I understand the necessary story beats of expecting betrayal from smodur and malice, and hoping that ryland would listen to reason and losing that chance, and the reveal of the frost legion matching up with that promo visual from way back at the start of the icebrood saga. Butttt, I just kept feeling like things moved slowly, and that it had to be building up to something a bit bigger. I don't think it's down to the as-yet-unvoiced dialogue, it just had kind of an 'oh. that's it?' quality to it. I can't help comparing it to Season 4, which to me was the most perfectly balanced in pacing and content. The 'we're not holding back content for expansions any more' season. The 'we wanted to keep Joko around for longer but made the correct decision to off him at his most enjoyable for the sake of the story', it all worked. The Joko parts managed to be full of tension and peril despite also being the funniest content in the game. The episodes after that were dynamic with the pull of Aurene's fate and our emotional tether to her. I might feel that way because in season 4 we had a huge personal stake in aurene. It was the Commander's story. But in Icebrood Saga we've been following the stories of our other characters - which is great and fine! - but without Aurene directly in the mix, what is the Commander's part in this story? Rytlock could have been the one doing all the things we did in this episode. I'm missing others in the cast too! I miss Taimi and Rox and Canach. I always assume you know when to swap the current cast around for the best results. But it's been a solid chain of eps with Rytlock and Crecia... I just hope we'll switch up again shortly. Kasmeer and Logan in this one didnt seem to do a great deal. I remember what it was like exploring say, Jahai, with the layers and layers of lore and history (villages from gw1! side stories about djinn!) and compared to that, No Quarter looks sort of like a mini-episode that only toed the plot slightly forward. I don't want this to sound too critical. I think the map is gorgeous and i cannot WAIT to explore more to sightsee. I enjoyed the events I found with the cool feeling of mowing down tons of enemies with the other players. I know Anet isn't the same company it was back then and there are pressures and difficulties right now too, I hope bringing up S4 isn't unfair. I just felt like the stakes kept raising, and I was sitting back, waiting to really enjoy it. It's all extremely serious, necessarily so. But we've also usually had Joko or Gorrik or Canach around to add some levity... without disrupting the tension. Right now, I know that would be hard to do. I did get really invested in the drama when it asked me if I wanted to drop a bomb down the shaft and picked no ("we", rytlock? "we"??) and started wildly guessing at how wrong things would go. That was well implemented. There's one aspect to this ep that IS pure genius, and that's slotting in the Steel warband strike mission beforehand. We learned SO much about the opposition through that. I know for sure if they'd said 'by the way Ryland, your warband is dead' without that strike mission, I would hardly care, but putting us in their shoes for a while , with as much characterisation as they had, worked a miracle in drawing me in. That was brilliant and perfectly implemented, although I do still hope perhaps Smodur was lying and one of them will pop back up later? Anyway it's not that I think the angle was off here. We had an opportunity to try to bring Ryland around and lost it because we made him want to be our enemy. Can't fight extremism by pretending the other side are walking targets and not people with feelings that made them that way, SMODUR. I do wonder if having the episode open with Ryland in a parlay didn't just water down the effort to get him for a second one, though? That felt a bit circuitous. I really was expecting a little more plot-meat? Like, hey, how's Primordus? How's the other dragon magically tied to the one we know is waking and corrupting people? How about all those dwarves that got themselves turned over to Primordus that we met in that strike? What's up with that? On this map that's REALLY close to Slaver's Exile?? What's up with thissssss Anyway sorry for all that, I'll be looking forward to Guild Chat later on and as always, eager for the next part in a few months! Well done for getting your release up during quarantine and all!

I made these guide videos a little while back. Just realised it might be worth posting them here. They're for people who want to know the content of the raids but aren't in a position to play through themselves or are too daunted. It's a bit hard to find videos about the story content since most youtube stuff is just boss fights with music over the top. These videos have just about all the dialogue I could get, trimmed boss encounters, and only the original music.

I'm not sure if this is answerable, but I got the feeling we were shown the final line of 'Darkness pays Orr a visit' back in S4E4 so that we might speak to Trahearne's spirit and let him know what the line was. It wouldn't have been out of place in the final episode, one dragonslayer to their old mentor, with all the Mists mayhem going on and spirits coming back and forth in several episodes surrounding that battle. I know that no sylvari spirits have been referenced from the Mists but still... am I crazy for thinking that seemed almost planned out? Or was it just there to make us sad? Cause it made me sad :p (PS. I hope you guys don't take it too seriously when people moan all the time about Kas and Jory being unlikable because they dare to reference being in a relationship. Everyone I know finds it adorable. I don't know how you handle hearing constant demands for character appearances that wouldn't fit within episode constraints and are planned for better, future things that you can't talk about)