penguin.7536

Thank you for posting this, this eventually lead me to finding the wiki page for Asthenes and it was an interesting read!

I totally agree and that would make the most sense! It wasn't surprising (since he pretty much tells you that you're gonna have to cut him down) I'm just wondering if it's written down somewhere and that I missed it. Especially with how the demons function, it'd be nice to know. I'm not even bothered that Mabon dies really, especially for a character who needs to be impacted that way that we all know and love, I just wish that like... there was a written dialogue surrounding why is occurred. Maybe there is and I'm not finding it. We spend so much time purifying corruption off of other NPCs and a boatload of demons pop out of them during the events that it just doesn't make sense to me that we didn't try.

I want to preface this by saying I know Guild Wars 2's method of introducing and killing off characters isn't exactly new, a few missions of spotlight before characters eat the dust are common. I don't always have problems with this - for instance, Blish was probably the most unquestionable 'deaths' in terms of "we got to know that character but they have to die" - but this really bugs me. I'd also like to say despite the odd thing here or there that I really enjoyed SOTO. I think all the new lore and occasional retcorns are, for the most part, fun.

Hey Bobby - after reviewing this, I don't think you need to worry about any discrepancies. The gender-specific lines align with previous content aside from what you described, with an encompassing them for simplicity. Appreciate you checking in on this.

I also don't play the game as "the player" and I like to get immersed in the narrative as the Commander, with a voice and history and personality. It's one of GW2's strongest writing points when it comes to comparing it to MMO protagonists. I've reviewed this and I think the occassional "them" and lean in EoD for more neutrality made the return to he/she for the commander stand out more. That option definitely sounds like it would be fantastic, though I imagine it would take too much time/resources than what's available. I also don't think it's surprising, it's just something I think isn't new, so to revisit it again with the commander aggressively not talking to their team about something they've experienced before (keeping lack of reasoning due to the effects of the haze in mind) was what struck me. It's an intentional choice, but it does make me feel like the commander hasn't ever learned anything by being in similar situations. The history aspect of the episode is what really drew me in. My brain lit up when I realized we were getting into demons again - maybe a very specific demon - it's one of my favorite things from GW1. So when we revisit the Commander's trauma, with time that I feel could be spent on investigation of that history, I do feel like I'm missing the opportunity to be more invested in the enemy we're facing when we're revisiting a theme we'd already seen. GW2 has leaned into being intimately character focused for a long time now, and it's a big positive when it comes to feeling like your characters really care about each other. However, I think world lore takes a backseat when the limited time we spend on story these days is becoming increasingly shorter. This might just be chalked up to it being post-release and there being more content to come.

I 100% agree with you on this and I suppose my sentiment was worded poorly. I think that writing to who is playing the game rather than building on the personality of the commander leads to poor development. However, I mistook their efforts on more neutral options in EoD as an effort to lean the commander in that direction, which is something I appreciated.

I definitely understand the intention behind the writing. Demons are probably one of my favorite things from GW1 lore going into GW2 and I would love to see them fleshed out beyond being a thing you attack. However, coming straight out of Jormag manipulation and many many many experiences of seeing loved ones over the commander's guilt - I guess I expected the commander to be more situationally aware, and viewed them not being in touch before their reason degrades (just brushing Gorrik off the first time it happened) felt off to me with IBS so fresh in my mind. It's totally my opinion only, and not like a view of "this is bad." I wish it showed more wow, the commander has a history with this thing, even if it had the same result by the end. I'm really glad you thought it was neat! It did stand out to me a lot, enough for me to make the post. I wish that that specificity was more honed in around the character's origin the same way they made efforts in HoT, but that's a long time gone by and the constraints of dialogue variations are something I'm sure is limiting these days.

I don't necessarily disagree with this point, though I think (subjectively) it's popular in other games of this genre that have dialogue that's specific to your character choice in the game and to me, it's not really anything new. I don't need the commander to be a conduit of myself as a player, and I think writing to that isn't encouraged for good reasons. I did, however, think (of my own poor memory) that they were leaning the commander towards neutrality and after reviewing I believe that's more me than what they're doing.

I definitely don't disagree with you here - it's always a common thing for a hero in a long-running story to just shrug off everything that's happened to them, and I've always appreciated GW2 for making the commander someone with a voice and history. However, I don't think this theme is particularly new to the commander. They've been made to face their loved ones deaths ever since their mentors guilt over death multiple times: Mordremoth The Shining Blade Initiation Their death to Balthazar Eir coming back in Sun's Refuge Jormag manipulation Soo Won Battle Pretty sure this is the third time we've seen our mentor Psychological damage and lingering to the commander is touched upon so many times in the GW2 story that if you did a playthrough of all of it back to back, you'd revisit your dead loved ones multiple times in succession ever since your mentors die. When fights aren't revolved around the effects of magic or the opponent themselves, it's usually introspection on the commander's psyche. These moments are usually brief, or build to a bigger ending, and admittedly don't really get into how the commander feels about it. I guess where my frustration lies is that the Commander has gone through these situations many times over and communicated with their team about it, made efforts to lay their friends to rest, and when a demon emerges it's revisiting this concept again in a very quick way (keeping in mind more content is coming, so this could be alleviated). The Commander has been made to hallucinate and become paranoid that they're seeing their loved ones so many times over, so guess I thought there would have been more of a nod to how they've experienced this before. The lack of nod to it kind of makes me feel like there wasn't much taken away from things like Jormag's manipulation, and kind of makes me feel like previous instances didn't have much impact. The concept of revisiting guilt is not something I'm opposed to - and progress with coping with trauma isn't linear and I'd love for it to give more nuance to the character. The return to the manifestion of a dead loved one's echo I guess is where the frustration lies, and the fact the Commander has so much experience with past content that I, in an entirely subjective view, feel like they would've done more than just dismiss it and not communicate with Gorrik. I'm also aware that people who are in situations of paranoia and exposure to the haze aren't necessarily prone to reason so it's left me feeling mixed about it. Also, when it comes to things like missing Joko - I think one of the best dialogue moments in the game was straight up just hearing from a villain that you've wreaked a lot of havoc in the name of doing good, because it's an external force making you look at your actions and go "hm, maybe that was questionable of me, yeah." It's a lot more effective to me.

Did anyone else notice they went from using they/them to gendered pronouns for a commander? I'm not here to start a big debate about pronouns (please don't), I just appreciated it being neutral when I'm not the same gender as my character while playing story. Edit: I wanted to block this out because I think the fact that the commander isn't often referred to by gender very often may be playing into why I previously thought it was more intentional that the character seen as neutral, + the effort to have more gender neutral rep in EoD and in an interaction in open world might be what made it stand out more when we heard he/she at the end of the episode. I agree that the Commander is not a conduit for the player and making decisions to cater to the player is generally not a great decision, but I did appreciate the lean towards more gender neutral rep in EoD. As an aside, too, I think the writing for the commander in this episode is really jarring considering their previous history. We've had so many plots about seeing hallucinations that it feels like that commander's trauma of losing people like their mentor, Trahearne and Eir, is getting dug up again to fill a gap with not having new content (we didn't get to know Almorra personally and if your character isn't Vigil I feel they don't know her much off the battlefield, so why're we freaking out?). The fact they get aggressively guarded and don't tell anyone they're hearing/seeing dead people straight after Jormag is a real step back imo