The Commander's power level [spoilers]

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

15 hours ago, Kalavier.1097 said:

Dragon's stand also only happens once. The dialogue Laranthir gives is angled toward the Commander, who in the story went around the edge of the battlefield as it happened and went under/into the tree as they reached the outside and fought the mouth of Mordremoth.

This isn't explicitly true hough, as it's established that Mordremoth could recover from "death" due to his domain of mind. The finale of spiking itself on the tree probably happens only once, but the dialogue with Laranthir indicating a before and after Hearts of Mind? It's firmly unclear. It could pretty easily imply that Mordremoth's body survived its mind and the Commander joined in for the final kill.

There's reasons established to believe that Dragon's Stand meta does canonically happen three times (once before, once during without Commander, and once after Hearts and Minds).

But Dragon's End dialogue and events wouldn't make sense to occur multiple times - from the Navan reveal to the Speakers, to Logan and the forces of Tyria + Elona showing up, it just wouldn't make sense to occur multiple times.

15 hours ago, Kalavier.1097 said:

I think it's back in LS1 where Anet explicitly came out and said that events/world bosses are written and intended lore-wise as being one time events, with the "event win" as being the canon ending.

Sounds vaguely familiar, but that was just in the scope of then, not the future, and explicitly about the Season 1 metas. The core metas are largely designed to possibly occur more than once (and with both Megadestroyer and Claw of Jormag showing up in S4E2, and Tequatl canonically "retreating" until killed in S1 after a power boost, that's very likely for many of the metas); for later metas, it's hard to say. Some, like Octovine the Draconis Mons twin destroyer wyverns, or Vinewrath, seem like they can happen repeatedly, while others, like Dragonstorm, Echovald Wilds (at least the Junkyard portion), and Dragon's End, seem like they're one-time events narratively.

Even in S1, the Twisted Marionette and Triple Trouble metas are implied to have happened multiple times, while the Prime Hologram happened just once per dialogue.

It's a weird place with metas in whether htey happen once or many times. I think the best bet is to listen to the dialogue and infer from the build-up and not the win / loss dialogue.

[Kalavier.1097]

3 minutes ago, Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

This isn't explicitly true hough, as it's established that Mordremoth could recover from "death" due to his domain of mind. The finale of spiking itself on the tree probably happens only once, but the dialogue with Laranthir indicating a before and after Hearts of Mind? It's firmly unclear. It could pretty easily imply that Mordremoth's body survived its mind and the Commander joined in for the final kill.

There's reasons established to believe that Dragon's Stand meta does canonically happen three times (once before, once during without Commander, and once after Hearts and Minds).

But Dragon's End dialogue and events wouldn't make sense to occur multiple times - from the Navan reveal to the Speakers, to Logan and the forces of Tyria + Elona showing up, it just wouldn't make sense to occur multiple times.

 

 

My counter would be surely they'd mention "We had to kill Mordremoth three times" then anywhere. Instead they don't, and describe the impaling of his head as the death moment. Hell, I think the whole "He would escape and regrow" is only revealed to the commander by Trahearne IIRC, and it's a shocking and sad moment because they establish that yes, they must kill him right then to prevent Mordremoth from surviving and returning. If Dragon's stand happens three times, this moment makes no sense.

 

In bitter harvest, they comment upon reaching the tree as being the Dragon's epicenter. This doesn't make sense to comment on the Dragon's stand meta canonically happens before they reach it.

In Hearts and minds, Trahearne informs the commander and team that you can't kill Mordremoth just by destroying the body. If Dragon's Stand meta happened before bitter harvest and hearts and minds with the Commander present, and was then happening again... this dialogue doesn't make sense. Braham, Commander and crew would know already that they must kill the mind. But they instead learn this from Trahearne. At the end of the instance, they outright declare "Mordremoth is dead, we killed the mind." before Trahearne corrects them and they do it.

Hell, in dragon's stand Laranthir tells them they must go into the mind to defeat Mordremoth. This information then conflicts with Trahearne being the one to tell them.

 

I think the dialogue was placed there just incase people went and talked to him, but like "Event fail" dialogue (like that of Dragon's End) isn't entirely canon. Nobody really talks about Mordremoth as if he was fought multiple times, same with Kralk or Zhaitan.

 

Likewise, I'd argue it doesn't make sense for Dragon's stand to happen three times. Three times the trees regrew entirely back and all the pact camps got wiped out? Three times the Exalted armors and golems got disabled and reactivated? Three times the head is impaled on a spike? Unless you twisted it and said that only the final battle happens three times and the "head impaled" only happened on the third time. But it feels like something that would explicitly be mentioned at some point. The pilot also comments on "Thanks to your efforts, and the brave heroes clearing the lanes, we can finally fly through the vines." Which would imply the lanes happened alongside the bitter harvest instance.

25 minutes ago, Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

Sounds vaguely familiar, but that was just in the scope of then, not the future, and explicitly about the Season 1 metas. The core metas are largely designed to possibly occur more than once (and with both Megadestroyer and Claw of Jormag showing up in S4E2, and Tequatl canonically "retreating" until killed in S1 after a power boost, that's very likely for many of the metas); for later metas, it's hard to say. Some, like Octovine the Draconis Mons twin destroyer wyverns, or Vinewrath, seem like they can happen repeatedly, while others, like Dragonstorm, Echovald Wilds (at least the Junkyard portion), and Dragon's End, seem like they're one-time events narratively.

Even in S1, the Twisted Marionette and Triple Trouble metas are implied to have happened multiple times, while the Prime Hologram happened just once per dialogue.

It's a weird place with metas in whether htey happen once or many times. I think the best bet is to listen to the dialogue and infer from the build-up and not the win / loss dialogue.

 

The line I remember was explicitly about Twisted Marionette, And in general it was "Unless we explicitly state it, this things happen once." In general it makes sense for the vast majority of events and world bosses or metas. A few you could describe reasonably as reoccurring like Octovine, but most don't make sense to happen repeatedly.

 

Claw of Jormag was commented on as being a class of Champion, same with the Shatterer. That's why you see multiple ones of those around. The Death branded Shatterer is explicitly the one killed in the world boss event however. Tequatl was described as retreating, until his update which explicitly stated that he died that time.

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

6 hours ago, Kalavier.1097 said:

My counter would be surely they'd mention "We had to kill Mordremoth three times" then anywhere. Instead they don't, and describe the impaling of his head as the death moment. Hell, I think the whole "He would escape and regrow" is only revealed to the commander by Trahearne IIRC, and it's a shocking and sad moment because they establish that yes, they must kill him right then to prevent Mordremoth from surviving and returning. If Dragon's stand happens three times, this moment makes no sense.

The problem with this line of thinking is that the "death moment" should have then be the moment we kill Trahearne, which would parallel the head impaling, if there was just one meta. While others may say "head impaling", the Commander would know the truth and spread that, not the false scenario of the "head impaling" being the death moment.

Unless it was the death of the last piece of Mordremoth, after the mind was wiped out and his body left on "consume everything autopilot".

6 hours ago, Kalavier.1097 said:

In Hearts and minds, Trahearne informs the commander and team that you can't kill Mordremoth just by destroying the body. If Dragon's Stand meta happened before bitter harvest and hearts and minds with the Commander present, and was then happening again... this dialogue doesn't make sense. Braham, Commander and crew would know already that they must kill the mind. But they instead learn this from Trahearne. At the end of the instance, they outright declare "Mordremoth is dead, we killed the mind." before Trahearne corrects them and they do it.

Hell, in dragon's stand Laranthir tells them they must go into the mind to defeat Mordremoth. This information then conflicts with Trahearne being the one to tell them.

But Trahearne wouldn't know that, and the way it's written is pretty clearly done with the intent of in case people didn't do the meta.

The thing is, Matthew Medina, a dev who worked on HoT, says "As you noted, there was enough concurrent attacks on Mordremoth's physical aspects at the end of Heart of Thorns, and while parts of its mind are distracted to fight off those attacks, the Commander's team enters its central mind and defeats it there. But even then there's still a kernel of its consciousness in a certain valuable "host", so that when you finally destroy the last vestige of that in Trahearne, Mordremoth finally does meet its end. This leaves the body (the jungle, vines, certain mordrem etc.) behind still somewhat functional, but effectively handicapped without that central overmind to direct it."

Now the key part to me is the ending: "This leaves [certain mordrem] behind still somewhat functional, but effectively handicapped". And that's the same explanation Laranthir gives for the Mouth of Mordremoth post-Hearts and Minds fight:

Though you killed Mordremoth within its realm of mind, the physical manifestation of its hunger remains in our world, still feeding on this hub of ley-line energy.

It should also note that if Mordremoth's mind survived in Trahearne, it would make sense to A) not show itself, or B) retreat to yet another body, since it was very clearly capable of body hoping - which includes what Matthew Medina said: "Mordremoth may, at one time, have had a traditional corporeal body as a "dragon". Honestly, it's the only one who probably remembers and at this point it really isn't important. At some point in history as it fed and grew however, it "became" the jungle."

The fact that Mordremoth didn't, however, implies that Mordremoth simply couldn't bodyhop anymore, and his mind could have very well been fractured - which again matches Laranthir's dialogue.

And this has made me theorize that the "three times we kill Mordremoth" is us killing the id (Mouth), ego (vestige in Trahearne), and superego (the avatarr in the Dream). In reverse order, as it were.

 

It doesn't help that the second half of the Mouth of Mordremoth fight was cut out, and with it we might have a much clearer picture of what the intended plan of plot order would be.

6 hours ago, Kalavier.1097 said:

Likewise, I'd argue it doesn't make sense for Dragon's stand to happen three times. Three times the trees regrew entirely back and all the pact camps got wiped out?
Three times the Exalted armors and golems got disabled and reactivated? Three times the head is impaled on a spike? Unless you twisted it and said that only the final battle happens three times and the "head impaled" only happened on the third time.

To clarify, I don't explicitly think the lane conquering happens three times, but the Mouth of Mordremoth portion does. But it would make sense for these events. If you fail an escort, a defense event occurs, and if you fail that, you get pushed back in the lane. And Mordremoth does regrow the three commanders - so he'd be very capable of resurrecting the three commanders' trees. So it is entirely plausible for the main parts of the lanes to occur more than once.

And as I already said - the impaling on a spike (the "retreating into the three") wouldn't happen before Hearts and Minds because it goes through the lobby area.

6 hours ago, Kalavier.1097 said:

The line I remember was explicitly about Twisted Marionette, And in general it was "Unless we explicitly state it, this things happen once." In general it makes sense for the vast majority of events and world bosses or metas. A few you could describe reasonably as reoccurring like Octovine, but most don't make sense to happen repeatedly.

With the Twisted Marionette, the "issue" is that there's two versions of that event (one with Dragon's Watch, another with Priory mooks) - and even during the victory, the marionette doesn't get dismantled, it just gets hauled up into the Breachmaker's portal. We never actually see the marionette destroyed.

[Kalavier.1097]

1 hour ago, Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

To clarify, I don't explicitly think the lane conquering happens three times, but the Mouth of Mordremoth portion does. But it would make sense for these events. If you fail an escort, a defense event occurs, and if you fail that, you get pushed back in the lane. And Mordremoth does regrow the three commanders - so he'd be very capable of resurrecting the three commanders' trees. So it is entirely plausible for the main parts of the lanes to occur more than once.

And as I already said - the impaling on a spike (the "retreating into the three") wouldn't happen before Hearts and Minds because it goes through the lobby area.

 

I will agree that if we are just referring to the fight around the tree, then I can accept that maybe he retreated/fell into the mist and emerged later. The pilot's dialogue does imply the commander did stuff entirely separate from the lanes though. In general, I believe it happened once but I'll be happy to leave it as this.

1 hour ago, Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

With the Twisted Marionette, the "issue" is that there's two versions of that event (one with Dragon's Watch, another with Priory mooks) - and even during the victory, the marionette doesn't get dismantled, it just gets hauled up into the Breachmaker's portal. We never actually see the marionette destroyed.

 

If Anet does another Q&A thing, this would be an amazing thing to get clarified, not just for marionette but in general across the board. Cause there are some questionable meta events/world bosses, and some that are so clearly repeated or one time only.

[EMPI.4013]

I suspect that the gw2 story will end with the commander ascending into some formless being. So if in gw3 the PC looks back the commander won't have a definitive look/race. So I think the commander will get stronger in some way later down the line.

Edited March 12, 2022 by EMPI.4013

[dusanyu.4057]

they will probably pull elder scrolls oblivion with the lore in that games story the lore states that after the game is over the hero of kvach becomes the new Shaeogorath

 

the commanders ultimate fate will likely be just before they die of old age Aurine not wanting to loose her beloved champion to the inevitabilities of mortality will give them the full power of a dragon champion than the eventually both go for one of those long 10,000 year sleeps. than can fade into legend than legend into myth

 

 

Edited March 12, 2022 by dusanyu.4057

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

Or they'll just do what GW2 does for the GW1 PC.

Just simply not refer to them except by title and gender neutral pronoun, and rarely refer to them at that.

ArenaNet's writers in the past have always had a strong preference for maintaining ambiguity for the PCs' beginnings and endings. The GW1 PC has no definitive origin or post-GW1 fate for this reason, as well as no definitive gender, nationality, or profession. Even though the accounts being linked means they can no doubt take whichever character you played the most in GW1 and use that, or something.

Edited March 12, 2022 by Konig Des Todes.2086

[ugrakarma.9416]

The real main advantange of gods, is seems handling any magic without blowing up themselfs or gone mad. They "fear" of Elder Dragons wasnt by themselfs, but fear of unpredictable "nuke fallout" that interactions of their magic with elder dragons could result.

 

But the for reasons I can't imagine writers they took the Gods out of the picture, since POF. Things like Divine Magic was forgotten.

Theres a incomplete dialogue where Taimi try say something about gods, in the part where we are trying catch warbeast.

 

Another bridge between Elder Dragons and Gods was The Forgotten, but they also "wiped" from the lore, because they all gotta branded.

Edited March 12, 2022 by ugrakarma.9416

[Amanda Whitemoon.6173]

about mordremoth, i was alwasy under the impression that the battles happened simultanious, and the moment the mouths hp goes to 0 and you get the cutscene of him flying around was when the commander killed the avatar in the story, and while the mouth is flyling around the tower, we get the dialogue with trahearne and when we kill trahearne than , the mouth falls down and gets impaled and dies

[Desh.7028]

4 hours ago, Amanda Whitemoon.6173 said:

when we kill trahearne than , the mouth falls down and gets impaled and dies

 

Many of the dragon fights after core GW2 are somewhat like this. You explained Mordremoth (and why it even impales itself - the meta event story wise is nothing more than a distraction).

 

Kralkatorik:

Spoiler

The meta event is forcing Kralkatorik into a more docile state, it is unclear whether the part with Aurene and you inside happens right after or simultaneously. Your team also stays outside to keep the magic away from the dragon so I'd guess it's after since it's all about getting him weak enough for you to win.

 

EoD (big spoilers here):

Spoiler

Soo-Won:

Spoiler

Here the sequence of events is obvious and explained by an achievement and voice line, where the commander tells the allies that Soo-Won will be subdued and in place for what happens in the last mission. Also Logan and others arrive during the meta event and then are present in the instance and Soo-Won is a lot more void-ish in the story mission than the meta where she's insane but still watery. Then she get's succ'ed repeatedly and Aurene finally gives you the juice (something that she probably was scared about doing because all other dragons leave some lasting corruption on their champions) and you smash the dragon. The End of Dragons meta event is actually nothing more than gathering troops and exhausting Soo-Won.

 

Zhaitan has been the only Dragon which was straight up fought and killed. And Anet realized that Dragons are slightly too big of a villain for this formula working out for all the Dragons.

Jormag and Primordus was very sudden for me but the lore was set up for it to make sense logically, it did feel like we got super lucky that both were at equal strength and got rid of each other perfectly though.

[Desh.7028]

17 hours ago, ugrakarma.9416 said:

The real main advantange of gods, is seems handling any magic without blowing up themselfs or gone mad. They "fear" of Elder Dragons wasnt by themselfs, but fear of unpredictable "nuke fallout" that interactions of their magic with elder dragons could result.

 

 

With EoD we now know more about this. God magic is an expression of the Mists while Dragon Magic is "cleaned up" and "modulated" 

Spoiler

Void magic

instead. It's not the same source despite one being able to interact with the other as seen by Kralkatorik's adventures.