"Not everyone made it"

[Fleabite.7528]

In the excellent new official recap vid prepping for next week's expansion launch, Taimi's voiceover notes at one point "Not everyone made it."

 

This is directly over a picture of Zojja falling. And is followed straight after with images of Eir; Marjorie's sister Belinda; and finally Traherne - all of whom we know died.

So is this it - final confirmation of Zojja's death after all these years? It was hinted at during LS4, when Eir and Snaff emerged briefly from the Mists. And now, perhaps, we know. 

[moonboi.1764]

The one thing that jumped out to me, was the last line. If they kill her and don’t make her a robot, I’ll riot!!

[Aravind.9610]

In the same shot of Zojja falling we also see Logan falling as well and he clearly made it out. So no, this isn't confirmation of Zojja's death.

[Fleabite.7528]

1 minute ago, Aravind.9610 said:

In the same shot of Zojja falling we also see Logan falling as well and he clearly made it out. So no, this isn't confirmation of Zojja's death.

Logan's very much in the background of that shot (and if you don't know it well, you wouldn't really know it's him). The visual emphasis is very much on Zojja - and the voice over is about major character deaths.

 

Of course devs could just update us, right? It's six and a half years since they released Heart of Thorns, after all, with no sign of Zojja ingame since her release from a pod!!

[Dawdler.8521]

30 minutes ago, Aravind.9610 said:

we also see Logan falling as well and he clearly made it out.

kitten. 

I mean oh no please survive and whatnot.

[Randulf.7614]

I dunno, they say “not everyone made it” then cut to Eir. I think that’s all she refers to. Ther could be a subtle reference I guess, but it seems more that Eir and the others is the specific reference here.

I think it would be poor form to have a popular npc killed off screen with no prior mention.

Edited February 23, 2022 by Randulf.7614

[ZeftheWicked.3076]

Trahearne's death will be remembered. Moving on...

[Tiamat.8254]

I wonder if they'll endgame the whole thing and time travel to sort all the kitten out 🤔

[lezbefriends.7516]

14 minutes ago, Randulf.7614 said:

I think it would be poor form to have a popular npc killed off screen with no prior mention.

Who cares about "form" when you have budget constraints?

[Fenella.2634]

3 hours ago, Fleabite.7528 said:

This is directly over a picture of Zojja falling. And is followed straight after with images of Eir; Marjorie's sister Belinda; and finally Traherne - all of whom we know died.

So is this it - final confirmation of Zojja's death after all these years? 

This is just a re-used trailer or cutscene from the end of LS2 / right before HoT. 

 

Zojja has always been positioned in the front in that shot. If it meant anything at all, it's at least not new.

[Ashantara.8731]

8 hours ago, Fleabite.7528 said:

Logan's very much in the background of that shot (and if you don't know it well, you wouldn't really know it's him). The visual emphasis is very much on Zojja - and the voice over is about major character deaths.

That's just a piece of the HoT trailer there. It doesn't really say anything about the current status quo of Zojja. They simply used old footage for that story summary.

[decease.3215]

i can't believe that you included Marjorie's sister Belinda, who barely any role in the story.  but exclude Blish......  who basically sacrifice himself, so we all got to live...

[Kossage.9072]

The latest information on Zojja on written form came from a German interview during "All or Nothing" release which suggests Zojja is very much alive but still recovering from severe brain trauma:

Quote

Linsey Murdock, Design Lead: Zojja was badly wounded in the fight against Mordremoth. The blighting pods have attacked the greatest strengths of Logan and Zojja. For Logan it was his physical talent, but for Zojja it was her mind. Traumatic brain injuries can lead to a long healing process and often have ongoing negative effects. I think Zojja's loved ones want to protect her from the ongoing conflict so she can concentrate on her recovery. [translation mine] (Source)

Tom Abernathy did mention in the 3-hour deeg chat that they haven't forgotten about Zojja but simply haven't found the right moment to bring her back. He also mentioned in a forum post that Felicia Day's schedule would force the team to write and record Zojja's line circa 6 or so months in advance, which means they can't change the lines in case an episode goes through story rewrites as was the case in e.g. Season 4 and the Icebrood Saga.

Expansions, however, are longer projects which allow more leeway (even though they also end up affected by late rewrites as was the case with both HoT and PoF). More importantly, ANet shipped several voice actor home recording kits due to Covid during the Icebrood Saga's later episodes, so they could feasibly ship one to Felicia Day and just have her record lines at her leisure when her and the voice director's schedules match.

So, I wouldn't count Zojja out just yet. Felicia has expressed interest in reprising her role as Zojja, and we know narrative devs are still invested in her. It's just that Taimi and Gorrik already fill that niche of researchers, and EoD will also introduce us to the engineer Yao who Taimi will apparently have some banter with, so bringing Zojja back now would have to have a narrative reason that doesn't make her superfluous when we'll already have so many geniuses in the group. But I'll keep my fingers crossed for Zojja's eventual appearance. 🙂

[Omega.6801]

10 minutes ago, Kossage.9072 said:

The latest information on Zojja on written form came from a German interview during "All or Nothing" release which suggests Zojja is very much alive but still recovering from severe brain trauma:

Tom Abernathy did mention in the 3-hour deeg chat that they haven't forgotten about Zojja but simply haven't found the right moment to bring her back. He also mentioned in a forum post that Felicia Day's schedule would force the team to write and record Zojja's line circa 6 or so months in advance, which means they can't change the lines in case an episode goes through story rewrites as was the case in e.g. Season 4 and the Icebrood Saga.

Expansions, however, are longer projects which allow more leeway (even though they also end up affected by late rewrites as was the case with both HoT and PoF). More importantly, ANet shipped several voice actor home recording kits due to Covid during the Icebrood Saga's later episodes, so they could feasibly ship one to Felicia Day and just have her record lines at her leisure when her and the voice director's schedules match.

So, I wouldn't count Zojja out just yet. Felicia has expressed interest in reprising her role as Zojja, and we know narrative devs are still invested in her. It's just that Taimi and Gorrik already fill that niche of researchers, and EoD will also introduce us to the engineer Yao who Taimi will apparently have some banter with, so bringing Zojja back now would have to have a narrative reason that doesn't make her superfluous when we'll already have so many geniuses in the group. But I'll keep my fingers crossed for Zojja's eventual appearance. 🙂

How long has it been since? What's the timeline of these statements and such?

The trailer makes it very clear, albeit through the language of cinema and not by explicitly stating that "Zojja, the characcter Zojja, the real Zojja we know from core story, is dead, gone, passed on. It's over. She's not coming back. She ded boi.". Combining the line "Not everyone maded it." with images of characters we know are gone and mixing Zojja with them isn't a subtle hint at something, she belongs to the goners of GW2 so far. She. Is. Dead.
Now gone doesn't mean gone forever, as GW2 has embraced the "no one's ever really gone"-policy we've seen with other franchises. Zojja can come back as a ghost, in visions, we can meet up in the mists, she could speak to us via Aurene or some magic thingy. But the in the flesh Zojja, living, breathing Zojja from back in the days, is gone, dead, sleeping with the fishes, pushing up the daisies.

[Rasimir.6239]

22 minutes ago, lokh.2695 said:

The trailer makes it very clear, albeit through the language of cinema and not by explicitly stating

The trailer, when viewed from a technical point of view, is simply a montage of existing in-game cinematics. They picked the best snippets to go with the narrative, but had no in-depth control of character placement and such, since they had to work with what was already there.

 

You can see this for example when we see the relatively unimportant scene of Belinda's death in the "not everyone made it" part, but not the much more impactful death of Blish (that didn't have any strong visual presentation to accompany it), the different scenes trying to show the elder dragons' deaths (that are very well picked but still different in impact due to the material available), and several other subtle differences.

 

Long story short, from a technical point of view I think they just picked the closest scene available, but really just wanted to show "Destiny's Edge went down" in that scene, without implicating any specific member of that group.

[Omega.6801]

11 minutes ago, Rasimir.6239 said:

The trailer, when viewed from a technical point of view, is simply a montage of existing in-game cinematics. They picked the best snippets to go with the narrative, but had no in-depth control of character placement and such, since they had to work with what was already there.

 

You can see this for example when we see the relatively unimportant scene of Belinda's death in the "not everyone made it" part, but not the much more impactful death of Blish (that didn't have any strong visual presentation to accompany it), the different scenes trying to show the elder dragons' deaths (that are very well picked but still different in impact due to the material available), and several other subtle differences.

 

Long story short, from a technical point of view I think they just picked the closest scene available, but really just wanted to show "Destiny's Edge went down" in that scene, without implicating any specific member of that group.

From a technical point of view, they could have just not shown Zojja or the scene she's in if they wanted to not say anything about the character.

[Rasimir.6239]

2 minutes ago, lokh.2695 said:

From a technical point of view, they could have just not shown Zojja or the scene she's in if they wanted to not say anything about the character.

How do you know they wanted to say something about Zojja, and not about Destiny's Edge, or even the Pact, since she was part of both (and that scene from the HoT intro one of the key scenes about the Pact being brought down by Mordremoth's attack)? As others pointed out already, there are more characters in that scene, namely Eir, Logan, and Traherne, and we know that all four are badly affected by that attack (although not all fatally).

[Omega.6801]

23 minutes ago, Rasimir.6239 said:

How do you know they wanted to say something about Zojja, and not about Destiny's Edge, or even the Pact, since she was part of both (and that scene from the HoT intro one of the key scenes about the Pact being brought down by Mordremoth's attack)? As others pointed out already, there are more characters in that scene, namely Eir, Logan, and Traherne, and we know that all four are badly affected by that attack (although not all fatally).

Mostly because she's front and center of the shown scene and usually, that means that the scene is about the thing or person that's front and center. Also, if it were about the pact, there would have been many other cinematics to chose from that would not point to Zojja's death but showed the rank and file being impaled and such.
I mean sure, as this is a discussion about the interpretation off a piece of art, there is not a right answer unless word of god confirms anything, yet I still think that the imagery is rather clear "Not everyone made it" - shows clip of Zojja conects in a very unsubtle way to yes, she is dead. How do you know they did not want to say something about Zojja? It could be shoddy directing and she's not dead, or they want to trick us, to subvert our expectationsin the future, but that's just bad writing/cinematography.

[Quench.7091]

I don't think that they'll kill her off-screen. The reason being that Zojja has a cool plot point. Logan and Zojja have had their bodies altered from the blighting pods that they were in. Maybe they'll explore the subject with the Wardens?

[dodgerrule.8739]

It seems like they’re eluding to the loss of someone that’s going to be gone soon

[DarcShriek.5829]

16 hours ago, lokh.2695 said:

How long has it been since? What's the timeline of these statements and such?

The trailer makes it very clear, albeit through the language of cinema and not by explicitly stating that "Zojja, the characcter Zojja, the real Zojja we know from core story, is dead, gone, passed on. It's over. She's not coming back. She ded boi.". Combining the line "Not everyone maded it." with images of characters we know are gone and mixing Zojja with them isn't a subtle hint at something, she belongs to the goners of GW2 so far. She. Is. Dead.
Now gone doesn't mean gone forever, as GW2 has embraced the "no one's ever really gone"-policy we've seen with other franchises. Zojja can come back as a ghost, in visions, we can meet up in the mists, she could speak to us via Aurene or some magic thingy. But the in the flesh Zojja, living, breathing Zojja from back in the days, is gone, dead, sleeping with the fishes, pushing up the daisies.

The problem with your interpetation is that the characters we know died had their death scenes in the trailer.  Zojja had no such scene.  Her scene was from before she died.  I suspect she isn't dead.  However, she may be incapacitated to the point where she can't return to the guild.

[Omega.6801]

7 hours ago, DarcShriek.5829 said:

The problem with your interpetation is that the characters we know died had their death scenes in the trailer.  Zojja had no such scene.  Her scene was from before she died.  I suspect she isn't dead.  However, she may be incapacitated to the point where she can't return to the guild.

Many of the scenes in that trailer are out of context. for example they show a scene where everyone is sad because Aurene just died, but the scene is framed by the words "We're running out of time - I'm running out of time" which gives the scene a different meaning in the context of the trailer.
But I guess I let all the confused emojis convince me. Sure, Zojja is all fine and dandy and will join the cast any minute now, along with the other mother tree and our evil Asura counterpart from the paralell-universe. We will get the nightmare court side of HoT and will finally learn what that locket was all about. All loose ends will be tied up nicely...every minute now...ah the copium, so relaxing/s

Edited February 25, 2022 by lokh.2695

[Ashantara.8731]

On 2/24/2022 at 8:06 AM, decease.3215 said:

i can't believe that you included Marjorie's sister Belinda, who barely any role in the story.  but exclude Blish......  who basically sacrifice himself, so we all got to live...

They had no movie sequence of Blish. 😆 Also, new players wouldn't understand the impact of seeing what to them would have looked like just a random golem.

P.S. I am still waiting for my Mini Blish, ANet! 🥰

[Rasimir.6239]

56 minutes ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

P.S. I am still waiting for my Mini Blish, ANet! 🥰

You and me both!

[DarcShriek.5829]

5 hours ago, lokh.2695 said:

Many of the scenes in that trailer are out of context. for example they show a scene where everyone is sad because Aurene just died, but the scene is framed by the words "We're running out of time - I'm running out of time" which gives the scene a different meaning in the context of the trailer.
But I guess I let all the confused emojis convince me. Sure, Zojja is all fine and dandy and will join the cast any minute now, along with the other mother tree and our evil Asura counterpart from the paralell-universe. We will get the nightmare court side of HoT and will finally learn what that locket was all about. All loose ends will be tied up nicely...every minute now...ah the copium, so relaxing/s

 

 

I don't know why you think I said Zojja would come back.  I just said she's probably not dead.