End of Dragons' Force of Chaos Wasn't A Retcon

[draxynnic.3719]

19 hours ago, Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

One of the pieces of lore is that Void != Dragonvoid.

Yes, Dragonvoid creates distinct regions themed around different dragons, but that's not the same as the Void, which seems to just mindlessly (as it very literally has no mind or persona) deconstructs and merges things. Dragonvoid is a personality put onto Void and is capable of manipulating Void similar to how Soo-Won can - in large part, no doubt, because Soo-Won was able to manipulate the Void (somehow). Similarly, Ankka had a very minor ability to manipulate the Void to either recreate Zhaitan energies from it, or manipulate the Zhaitan energies within Void.

Things the Mists create eventually dying because it isn't everlasting is, imo, far less a case of "the Mists is in a constant state of flux" and more just that things eventually die and fade away. And as mentioned, Fractals are implied to be unstable not because they'd disappear eventually (though they probably would), but because things can break out of their loop and enter other realities - e.g., the Mist Stranger's dialogue on the Twisted Marionette and Dessa's dialogue telling us that removing instability is the same as killing hostiles.

As I said in a much earlier post, when The Voice of The Void nickanme was first given to Dhuum back in 2010, along with the lore about Dhuum, I pretty much theorized right then and there that The Void could be exactly what you describe - that it was, in effect, a massive recycling function for The Mists.

Except that we see some of that cycle of creation and destruction in the fractals. When Dessa was persuaded by Ellen Kiel to leave the Observatory, she was destroyed, and a new copy of her with her memory reset was created. Fractal resets ARE a cycle of creation and destruction.

Similarly, you mention that the Mists create things from protomatter. This is, again, creation and destruction. The protomatter is destroyed in order to create something in its place. Now, people might not cry about protomatter being destroyed, and it might be exceptionally morphic such that relatively little energy is required to transform it, and that more is required to transform regular matter. But we know that regular matter can also be transformed. That's basically elemental magic in a nutshell. A simple fireball converts air into a plasma to form a fireball, and then throwing that fireball will likely damage whatever it hits. Destruction, creation, destruction. We also see that relatively mild concentrations of magic by the standards of most of Guild Wars 2 results in spontaneous creation of elementals, and for earth elementals at least, you're talking about the spontaneous destruction of a piece of the landscape in order to form a sentient elemental creature. (Which is, itself, precedent for magic spontaneously creating sentient creatures... and djinn take that a step further by being sapient, but it's less clear they appear completely spontaneously).

Now, throwing a fireball at someone requires a deliberate action, but Taimi's point, I think, is that when the magic overload gets extreme enough, this sort of thing starts happening spontaneously. It's hard for life to survive if their brains could spontaneously be transformed into a fireball, or if a portal could spontaneously open, transport half their body somewhere else, and close again. And it kinda sucks if you try to take shelter in a building and the door spontaneously transforms into a solid wall. We saw things at this level as isolated incidents, but if the "Void" really got going and that sort of thing was happening everywhere - that's what Taimi was referring to. 

19 hours ago, Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

The issue with the theory is that even to this day, it's completely baseless. Because as things stand, The Void is only related to Tyria's magic system - not the entire multiverse.

Given that Tyrian magic still works in the Mists, I am extremely sceptical that the rules in Tyria are exceptionally different to those in the Mists.

19 hours ago, Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

And while it would make sense to say that there is a level at which energy would potentially be destroying existing material so something new can be created in its place, there's simply no evidence for this. For all we know, the Void is a purely localized anomaly within the multiverse and the Mists does constantly create things without a need of a recycling bin.

It should be noted that with Kralkatorrik, we did not destroy the facets per se. Based on the dialogue and objectives, Aurene was simply removing the magic from Kralkatorrik to weaken him - mechanically this is done by bringing facet NPCs to 0 HP and then using a special action skill.

Counteractively, with the Dragonvoid's Elder Dragon hearts, we actively are destroying the hearts and Void manifestations of the Elder Dragons, not absorbing or redirecting the magic, based on the dialogue and objective wording.

That's... not how the events are happening. In the story mission, as you defeat each manifestation, you deploy one of the copies of Ankka's device in order to suck up the magic of that manifestation, while the PC themselves is also absorbing more and more of the magic through the link with Aurene (it just happens automatically rather than requiring a special action key). The Strike Mission seems to be a kind of fractal echo of the story mission, but there we're not really destroying the hearts, but purifying the hearts with Aurene's energy and sending them back in order to make the Dragonvoid vulnerable to direct attack, and at the very end, there's an animation of all of the party members absorbing the Dragonvoid's energy. The situation and therefore the precise mechanics aren't the same, but the general principle is.

19 hours ago, Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

 

I feel that creates a bit of a distinction between the two events, but more than that, I do not see how Soo-Won having all six domains in her body declares that the Dragonvoid is equivalent to "Soo-Won's Torment" so to speak. As we saw in Harvest Temple, the Dragonvoid is more than just a twisted persona of Soo-Won which is what Kralkatorrik's Torment was. It was Kralkatorrik's Torment and the other five dragon's in a weird meld. It even blatantly quoted Kralkatorrik's Torment, Jormag, and Mordremoth outright:

The Dragonvoid: Your efforts are futile. Join us. Be liberated from your fear.
Detective Rama: I hate to admit it, but that's

thing's starting to make a lot of sense.
Gorrik: Jormag is the master of lies: don't listen to a thing it says!
The Dragonvoid: You wound us, master asura.
Gorrik: Good!

[...]

Gorrik: Well...that was certainly effective!
The Dragonvoid: Aren't you tired?
The Dragonvoid: I will set you free.
The Dragonvoid: A world free of strife.
Gorrik: One dragon down. Only four to go...
Detective Rama: And one big ball of nasty.

Ivan: Unleash your fury, Commander!
The Dragonvoid: Blind! Lost!
The Dragonvoid: Your world ends!
The Dragonvoid: Anguish! Malignity!

The Dragonvoid: Embrace oblivion.

Marjory Delaqua: I'll die before I let you take her from me too!

It technically also quotes Primordus and Zhaitan but... well... the game didn't really have anything to quote so sadly we only get growls and roars. Which to me shows that it's an amalgamation of all six personalities, rather than "Soo-Won's Torment" which by name would imply just her own personality.

Yes, Kralkatorrik's Torment was foreshadowing Void and Dragonvoid's existence (but their name wasn't foreshadowed at all imo), but they're still fundamentally different - Kralkatorrik's Torment was a split personality established by Kralkatorrik consuming other domains of magic over the many millennia. Jormag began to go insane with Torment in the same light during Champions (even gets a story step called Jormag's Madness to symbolize this), and like Kralkatorrik being animalistic, Primordus was animalistic for the same reasons - conflicting magic twisting and simplifying his mind over millennia.

But Dragonvoid itself appears to be a merging of the six Elder Dragon's Torment, rather than just Soo-Won's, and given form by manipulating the Void itself - which it then used that ability to create minions based on the Elder Dragons' five kinds of minions.

Again, I think Kralkatorment having those aspects of the magic that Kralkatorrik had set a precedent for that. The bosses in question were weaker, but still carried the personality of those the magic came from - Balthazar's was another avatar of Balthazar, and Mordremoth's was the avatar of Mordremoth's personality we fight in Mordremoth's mind. Zhaitan was just represented with a minion, but they didn't have a suitably sized avatar of Zhaitan.

So I don't think it's contradictory that the Dragonvoid can be analogous to Kralkatorment for Soo-Won, while still carrying echoes of the personalities of the other dragons. And I think 'echoes' is accurate - the aspect of Jormag, for instance, lacks Jormag's full persuasive abilities, relying only on brief quotes and brute psychic force. One could consider the aspects as a consequence of absorbing the magic from the dragons and then losing control of that magic, similar to how Mai Trin losing control over the powers granted by Scarlet's legend results in the creation of a massive projection of Scarlet.

I think one of the points of contention here is that you might be thinking that I'm saying that this means that Soo-Won and the Dragonvoid are not separate entities, when that's not actually the case. Instead, I view it as being a case of two separate entities in one body. The Dragonvoid is acting through Soo-Won, which is why everything calms down when she gets back in control... but not that the Dragonvoid is in her mind, she knows, like Kralkatorrik before her, that the only way to be rid of it is through death - and that the more time passes, the more likely it will be that (again, like Kralkatorrik) the Dragonvoid will grow strong enough that she'd never be able to retain control and become a prisoner in her own body, with the Dragonvoid having full control of all the magic she had absorbed (with dire consequences for the world).

[The Greyhawk.9107]

On 1/8/2023 at 10:22 AM, Mariyuuna.6508 said:

The cinematic Glint's Legacy literally and directly references the Void in releveance to the Elder Dragons all the way back in Path of Fire, including a graphical depiction of how it unmakes everything and how that balance can be restored, but if you show anyone this just try to tell you how wrong you are.

 

The only thing people care about is being right anymore, not the truth. Because the devs didn't directly spell it out to them, it didn't exist. They confirmed a long time ago the story is always written several years ahead, btw, and in some parts have been sketched out since the very beginning of the game (despite being called kittenpulls), but sadly alot of this information was lost with the old-old forums.

 

The desync is because the modern writers are interpreting the original drafts in a different way.

This is an aside, but the original forums are archived and available to be viewed online: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

18 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Except that we see some of that cycle of creation and destruction in the fractals. When Dessa was persuaded by Ellen Kiel to leave the Observatory, she was destroyed, and a new copy of her with her memory reset was created. Fractal resets ARE a cycle of creation and destruction.

I don't really see that as the case.

Rather than "she was destroyed and a new copy of her with her memory reset was created", I feel it was just "everything in the fractal repositioned itself and reset" - that nothing was destroyed, it's position and matter simply changed. And we are talking "a rock got turned into a flower pot" changed, we're talking "repositioned and made living (if it was dead) again with memory loss".

 

18 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Similarly, you mention that the Mists create things from protomatter. This is, again, creation and destruction. The protomatter is destroyed in order to create something in its place.

That is asanine levels of semantics that in no way can I ever see ArenaNet writers - or anyone else beyond physicists and people just hellbent on winning an argument - would ever make.

I mean, if we get to the nitty gritty like you are, the protomatter isn't being destroyed - its form is simply changing. The point I was making, however, is that what is made from protomatter itself isn't destroyed and returned to protomatter.

18 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Given that Tyrian magic still works in the Mists, I am extremely sceptical that the rules in Tyria are exceptionally different to those in the Mists.

The key thing to make note of is that the magic which functions in the Mists is only seen functioning in the Mists that is in a relatively close space to Tyria - we have no indication that Tyrian magic would function in other worlds. The closest indication to such would be the Six Gods, but it's been firmly established that not only are they sources of magic, but their magic is fundamentally different from Tyria's magic - so much so that their magic went for a long time to be incorruptible by the Elder Dragons, hence why Forgotten and djinn used it as protection against dragon corruption and consumption. It was only when Balthazar died feeding mutated Tyrian magic to Kralkatorrik that Kralk was able to begin bypassing the djinns' protection made from Abaddon's magic to corrupt them.

 

So we cannot fundamentally argue that "Tyrian magic still works in the Mists" - just that it still works in the Mists bordering Tyria, and that proximity may very well be key to why it still works for all we know.

 

18 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

That's... not how the events are happening. In the story mission, as you defeat each manifestation, you deploy one of the copies of Ankka's device in order to suck up the magic of that manifestation, while the PC themselves is also absorbing more and more of the magic through the link with Aurene (it just happens automatically rather than requiring a special action key). The Strike Mission seems to be a kind of fractal echo of the story mission, but there we're not really destroying the hearts, but purifying the hearts with Aurene's energy and sending them back in order to make the Dragonvoid vulnerable to direct attack, and at the very end, there's an animation of all of the party members absorbing the Dragonvoid's energy. The situation and therefore the precise mechanics aren't the same, but the general principle is.

Mmm, double checked, and fair. You're absorbing the champions, but not the Hearts - based on the objectives, you're "cleansing" those. It's very peculiar that the objectives use fundamentally different terminology for the champions you fight, and the Elder Dragon hearts.
*Absorb the Dragonvoid champions.*
*Cleanse the Heart of <Elder Dragon/Dragonvoid>.*
Now what "cleanse" means in this context is a bit more tricky - but we're not absorbing it, otherwise why bother differentiating the two? And it should be noted, that the final heart we cleanse isn't Soo-Won's, like it is with Kralkatorrik. It's The Dragonvoid's. Which further indicates that the Dragonvoid != Soo-Won's Torment, since it's labeled as a separate kind of entity, and with the hearts of all five other Elder Dragons too, that are labeled as their own.

18 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Again, I think Kralkatorment having those aspects of the magic that Kralkatorrik had set a precedent for that. The bosses in question were weaker, but still carried the personality of those the magic came from - Balthazar's was another avatar of Balthazar, and Mordremoth's was the avatar of Mordremoth's personality we fight in Mordremoth's mind. Zhaitan was just represented with a minion, but they didn't have a suitably sized avatar of Zhaitan.

So I don't think it's contradictory that the Dragonvoid can be analogous to Kralkatorment for Soo-Won, while still carrying echoes of the personalities of the other dragons. And I think 'echoes' is accurate - the aspect of Jormag, for instance, lacks Jormag's full persuasive abilities, relying only on brief quotes and brute psychic force. One could consider the aspects as a consequence of absorbing the magic from the dragons and then losing control of that magic, similar to how Mai Trin losing control over the powers granted by Scarlet's legend results in the creation of a massive projection of Scarlet.

I think one of the points of contention here is that you might be thinking that I'm saying that this means that Soo-Won and the Dragonvoid are not separate entities, when that's not actually the case. Instead, I view it as being a case of two separate entities in one body. The Dragonvoid is acting through Soo-Won, which is why everything calms down when she gets back in control... but not that the Dragonvoid is in her mind, she knows, like Kralkatorrik before her, that the only way to be rid of it is through death - and that the more time passes, the more likely it will be that (again, like Kralkatorrik) the Dragonvoid will grow strong enough that she'd never be able to retain control and become a prisoner in her own body, with the Dragonvoid having full control of all the magic she had absorbed (with dire consequences for the world).

The Facets within Kralkatorrik didn't have any personality though. They were just physical manifestations of the magic, but by all indication fully mindless. The three facets never talk or anything - not even Balthazar's which looks just like him, not an avatar of him.

So I would argue that it is contradictory to argue the Dragonvoid is analogous to Kralkatorrik's Torment for Soo-Won. From the lack or existence of personalities, to the lack or existence of independent Hearts, and even just simply the Dragonvoid's being treated as a separate entity by Aurene and co.

18 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

I think one of the points of contention here is that you might be thinking that I'm saying that this means that Soo-Won and the Dragonvoid are not separate entities, when that's not actually the case. Instead, I view it as being a case of two separate entities in one body. The Dragonvoid is acting through Soo-Won, which is why everything calms down when she gets back in control... but not that the Dragonvoid is in her mind, she knows, like Kralkatorrik before her, that the only way to be rid of it is through death - and that the more time passes, the more likely it will be that (again, like Kralkatorrik) the Dragonvoid will grow strong enough that she'd never be able to retain control and become a prisoner in her own body, with the Dragonvoid having full control of all the magic she had absorbed (with dire consequences for the world).

That's fair, but I would still distinguish it from being the same as Kralkatorrik's Torment, which I would even argue was the same entity as Kralkatorrik and not "two entities in one body".

And even then, Dragonvoid seems fully capable of existing without Soo-Won's body at the end - after we use the machine on her, I'm pretty sure that the Dragonvoid is no longer using her body, but existing independently in its own body that vaguely resembles Soo-Won and the other five Elder Dragons. Which is part of why it's fully unleashed.

Simply calling Dragonvoid to be "Soo-Won's Torment" feels like it's simply downplaying what Dragonvoid is, as it is presented as being an amalgamation of all six Elder Dragons - or rather, of the six Elder Dragons' Torment; which is to say that Soo-Won's Torment is merely a fraction of Dragonvoid and not its whole. That is my point of contention here.

[maxwelgm.4315]

"Magic being sentient" was foreshadowed long, long, long ago with the first living world legendary collection. All of our legendary trinkets from LW point at sentient magic (in a very literal sense) and so do the leyline anomalies and related anomaly side achievements. That is not a retcon but it is out of nowhere that Soo Won was benign all along and "consumed" by it. It is otherwise a simple (simplistic even) plot development and it shows hard how rushed it was that they also had this whole baby dragon thing going on in Dragon's End - we learn next to nothing of other dragon cycles in the end.

[draxynnic.3719]

On 1/14/2023 at 6:21 PM, Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

I don't really see that as the case.

Rather than "she was destroyed and a new copy of her with her memory reset was created", I feel it was just "everything in the fractal repositioned itself and reset" - that nothing was destroyed, it's position and matter simply changed. And we are talking "a rock got turned into a flower pot" changed, we're talking "repositioned and made living (if it was dead) again with memory loss".

 

That is asanine levels of semantics that in no way can I ever see ArenaNet writers - or anyone else beyond physicists and people just hellbent on winning an argument - would ever make.

I mean, if we get to the nitty gritty like you are, the protomatter isn't being destroyed - its form is simply changing. The point I was making, however, is that what is made from protomatter itself isn't destroyed and returned to protomatter.

I think the distinction here is that we're using different criteria for 'destroyed'. Is a chicken destroyed in the process of being slaughtered and roasted for dinner? Most people would say no, not until the chicken is eaten, but the chicken would probably disagree. Transformation often IS a form of destruction and creation - you could say that the chicken has been transformed by the cooking process, but you could also say that the live chicken was killed and a meal was created. If you're familiar with Full Metal Alchemist, this is pretty much exactly what the "equivalent exchange" principle was all about.

And this is the level of destruction needed in the context of Taimi's comment. It takes a relatively small amount of change for life to go from living to dead. Call it a continuous cycle of creation and destruction, call it constant transformation instead, but either way, life can't survive.

Similarly, you say that nothing is destroyed when Dessa is reset... but all of her memories that came after the point she was reset to WERE destroyed. Mind you, what I recall seeing was Dessa entering an asura gate, her body disappearing (and not reappearing on the opposite side), and a new Dessa appearing in her place. You could claim that the fractal merely pulled a uno reverse on the gate when Dessa tried to leave and wiped her memory in the process, but it certainly looked like old Dessa was destroyed and a new one created to me 

 

On 1/14/2023 at 6:21 PM, Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

The key thing to make note of is that the magic which functions in the Mists is only seen functioning in the Mists that is in a relatively close space to Tyria - we have no indication that Tyrian magic would function in other worlds. The closest indication to such would be the Six Gods, but it's been firmly established that not only are they sources of magic, but their magic is fundamentally different from Tyria's magic - so much so that their magic went for a long time to be incorruptible by the Elder Dragons, hence why Forgotten and djinn used it as protection against dragon corruption and consumption. It was only when Balthazar died feeding mutated Tyrian magic to Kralkatorrik that Kralk was able to begin bypassing the djinns' protection made from Abaddon's magic to corrupt them.

 

So we cannot fundamentally argue that "Tyrian magic still works in the Mists" - just that it still works in the Mists bordering Tyria, and that proximity may very well be key to why it still works for all we know.

As far as we've been able to go, Tyrian magic has been able to work. So as far as we've been able to experiment, the theory holds.

There does seem to be some extra form of magic that is present in the Mists that isn't normally found in Tyria... but I don't think this means that magic in the Mists represents a fundamentally different system, merely that there is some part of the system that is not normally observed on Tyria. We generally don't see much naturally occurring metallic hydrogen or electron degenerate matter on Earth, but the laws of physics are still the same.

On 1/14/2023 at 6:21 PM, Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

 

Mmm, double checked, and fair. You're absorbing the champions, but not the Hearts - based on the objectives, you're "cleansing" those. It's very peculiar that the objectives use fundamentally different terminology for the champions you fight, and the Elder Dragon hearts.
*Absorb the Dragonvoid champions.*
*Cleanse the Heart of <Elder Dragon/Dragonvoid>.*
Now what "cleanse" means in this context is a bit more tricky - but we're not absorbing it, otherwise why bother differentiating the two? And it should be noted, that the final heart we cleanse isn't Soo-Won's, like it is with Kralkatorrik. It's The Dragonvoid's. Which further indicates that the Dragonvoid != Soo-Won's Torment, since it's labeled as a separate kind of entity, and with the hearts of all five other Elder Dragons too, that are labeled as their own.

The Facets within Kralkatorrik didn't have any personality though. They were just physical manifestations of the magic, but by all indication fully mindless. The three facets never talk or anything - not even Balthazar's which looks just like him, not an avatar of him.

They're weaker. It's been long established that magic is needed to fuel intelligence and personality. Given that the Dragonvoid's aspects are barely caricatures of the dragons themselves (or at least that seems to be the case with Jormag), I don't think it's unreasonable to think that the facets within Kralkatorrik are similar, but sufficiently weak that they 

On 1/14/2023 at 6:21 PM, Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

So I would argue that it is contradictory to argue the Dragonvoid is analogous to Kralkatorrik's Torment for Soo-Won. From the lack or existence of personalities, to the lack or existence of independent Hearts, and even just simply the Dragonvoid's being treated as a separate entity by Aurene and co.

I would argue that the pieces being claimed by Aurene along the way were hearts, albeit substantially weaker than Kralkatorrik's own. I'd also note that I don't think there was a heart in Mordremoth's mindscape. Maybe that was the seed that was planted in Trahearne... which suggests that until the Dragonvoid, destroying the body was sufficient to destroy a heart.

On 1/14/2023 at 6:21 PM, Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

That's fair, but I would still distinguish it from being the same as Kralkatorrik's Torment, which I would even argue was the same entity as Kralkatorrik and not "two entities in one body".

I think the analogy is there. Both were a dark force anchored in the body of the dragon in question, and both were created by there being too much magic in the dragon. The distinction is that the Dragonvoid represented a lot more magic, and that Soo-Won was still fighting despite that. It's probably a matter of semantics how much you'd consider two sides of a multiple personality disorder situation to be separate entities, but Sane Kralkatorrik did seem to regard Torment as a separate entity. There's a bit of interpretation on whether this is actually the case or whether it's more of a Jekyll/Hyde situation, but I think the same could be true of Soo-Won. 

On 1/14/2023 at 6:21 PM, Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

And even then, Dragonvoid seems fully capable of existing without Soo-Won's body at the end - after we use the machine on her, I'm pretty sure that the Dragonvoid is no longer using her body, but existing independently in its own body that vaguely resembles Soo-Won and the other five Elder Dragons. Which is part of why it's fully unleashed.

I'm pretty sure that's not how it happened. It's been a while since I last did the story step (I'd consider the story to be more accurate on what really happened than the strike), but when you first hit Soo-Won with the device, it fails, putting the Dragonvoid in control instead. You then work your way up through the echoes of the other dragons until you get back to being face-to-face with Dragonvoid-in-Soo-Won's-body. First phase on that top platform, the Dragonvoid sticks to using Soo-Won's abilities only, until Soo-Won's heart pops out and can be purified. Then it starts transforming, but there's no point at which we see Soo-Won regaining her body until the Dragonvoid is finally defeated.

And even then, we still need to kill her to finish it. She knows that the Dragonvoid is only temporarily subdued. It's still in her. And as long as she continues to live, it can grow again and seize control. Just as we needed to kill Trahearne to prevent Mordremoth from converting Trahearne's body into its own.

On 1/14/2023 at 6:21 PM, Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

Simply calling Dragonvoid to be "Soo-Won's Torment" feels like it's simply downplaying what Dragonvoid is, as it is presented as being an amalgamation of all six Elder Dragons - or rather, of the six Elder Dragons' Torment; which is to say that Soo-Won's Torment is merely a fraction of Dragonvoid and not its whole. That is my point of contention here.

I don't think these two points are contradictory. The Dragonvoid is what it is because what has overloaded Soo-Won to the point where she's developed her own Torment is that she's now containing pretty close to all of the magic that had previously belonged to all six Elder Dragons. And we saw within Kralkatorrik's body that these clashing magic types manifest in a form that represents that magic. When Soo-Won has nearly all the power of all of her children as well as her own, it's natural that they would manifest in the form of her children. The Dragonvoid can be an amalgamation of all six Elder Dragons and the equivalent of Torment for Soo-Won. 

Heck, this might even be an argument for it being a manifestation of magic-overload-induced-madness on the part of Soo-Won. She's a mother, so it makes sense that part of her madness might manifest in wanting to have her dead children back... and through being overloaded by their magic, she has the power to do just that. Based on what we see in Kralkatorrik, the seeds are going to be there already... she just needs to grow them and give them a personality from what she remembers them. But it's still only a facsimile of the original, which is why even the relatively talkative dragons are only a reflection of their former selves.

Either way, I think it is a fair observation that there is a natural growth from Torment to the Dragonvoid. Both were formed out of having too much magic in one form. Both have facets that represent the sources of that magic (although the Dragonvoid's are much stronger and more defined in personality). Each could be interpreted as either multiple personalities or as separate entities fighting over control of a body and the body's power (although Sane Kralkatorrik appears to have lost years ago).

The only issue is the term 'void', but that could be the result of Soo-Won's perspective of what Tyria effectively was before she did whatever it was she did in primordial times, and what she fears it will return to if it is torn apart by a magical overload.

Edited January 15, 2023 by draxynnic.3719

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

16 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

I think the distinction here is that we're using different criteria for 'destroyed'. Is a chicken destroyed in the process of being slaughtered and roasted for dinner? Most people would say no, not until the chicken is eaten, but the chicken would probably disagree. Transformation often IS a form of destruction and creation - you could say that the chicken has been transformed by the cooking process, but you could also say that the live chicken was killed and a meal was created. If you're familiar with Full Metal Alchemist, this is pretty much exactly what the "equivalent exchange" principle was all about.

And this is the level of destruction needed in the context of Taimi's comment. It takes a relatively small amount of change for life to go from living to dead. Call it a continuous cycle of creation and destruction, call it constant transformation instead, but either way, life can't survive.

Similarly, you say that nothing is destroyed when Dessa is reset... but all of her memories that came after the point she was reset to WERE destroyed. Mind you, what I recall seeing was Dessa entering an asura gate, her body disappearing (and not reappearing on the opposite side), and a new Dessa appearing in her place. You could claim that the fractal merely pulled a uno reverse on the gate when Dessa tried to leave and wiped her memory in the process, but it certainly looked like old Dessa was destroyed and a new one created to me 

Semantics aside, I do not think ArenaNet's writers ever considered Fractals reseting to be "The Mists destroying things it created". Even if you argue semantics all day, there is the principle of the writers' intent first and foremost, and secondly, there would be the aspect of attribution - it is not the Mists destroying Dessa's memory and reseting the fractal, it's the fractal's own existence doing that. Just the same way the Mists weren't destroying the first generation of Skyscales, that was just their own biology.

To take an irl religious view: very few people would argue that God is actively destroying people when they die for all sorts of various reasons.

16 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

As far as we've been able to go, Tyrian magic has been able to work. So as far as we've been able to experiment, the theory holds.

There does seem to be some extra form of magic that is present in the Mists that isn't normally found in Tyria... but I don't think this means that magic in the Mists represents a fundamentally different system, merely that there is some part of the system that is not normally observed on Tyria. We generally don't see much naturally occurring metallic hydrogen or electron degenerate matter on Earth, but the laws of physics are still the same.

Though we do know that Tyrian magic is not omnipresent in the Mists, as the human homeworld is stated to have had little to no magic by devs. One of the few facts we know of the human homeworld, and the leading cause for the human misbelief of the Six creating magic on Tyria.

Additionally, one can argue that Tyrians can use magic outside Tyria not because Tyrian magic exists outside of the system (which, according to Aurene and Taimi, is fatal to Tyria), but because they're using magic within themselves - not dissimilar to Lyssa's Muse's own speech at the end of Nightfall.

16 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

They're weaker. It's been long established that magic is needed to fuel intelligence and personality. Given that the Dragonvoid's aspects are barely caricatures of the dragons themselves (or at least that seems to be the case with Jormag), I don't think it's unreasonable to think that the facets within Kralkatorrik are similar, but sufficiently weak that they 

Unfinished thought?

That said, I don't think that the facets are all that similar. The facets aren't even caricatures, they're merely representations very similar to the facets of Glint fought in GW1. A reflection of magic formed through the crystal domain - especially with the term "facet" seems omnipresent in with GW lore and crystal dragons.

Even the characters in The Only One outright say they never fight multiple Elder Dragons at once.

Ayumi: You do this kind of thing all the time?

Marjory Delaqua: We usually don't fight the dragons all at once.

Which I think goes a long way to argue against the notion that they're the same thing. The Story journal even calls it an Elder Dragon echo.

16 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

I would argue that the pieces being claimed by Aurene along the way were hearts, albeit substantially weaker than Kralkatorrik's own. I'd also note that I don't think there was a heart in Mordremoth's mindscape. Maybe that was the seed that was planted in Trahearne... which suggests that until the Dragonvoid, destroying the body was sufficient to destroy a heart.

Yes to the last bit - until Dragonvoid, with exception of Kralkatorrik, we never needed to directly attack the heart. That was newly created in EoD and a callback both to S4 finale as well as The All depiction where the hearts were (sans Kralk's and the Dragonvoid's) literally just the orbs from The All visions.

As to the others being hearts - definite disagree. Balthazar shouldn't have need of a magic heart, and the others, well, they were already dead. The Hearts killed in EoD weren't the originals or anything, but were manifestations by the Dragonvoid copying the original, like the rest of the Dragonvoid's Elder Dragon bodies - and completely different from the facets.

16 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

I think the analogy is there. Both were a dark force anchored in the body of the dragon in question, and both were created by there being too much magic in the dragon. The distinction is that the Dragonvoid represented a lot more magic, and that Soo-Won was still fighting despite that. It's probably a matter of semantics how much you'd consider two sides of a multiple personality disorder situation to be separate entities, but Sane Kralkatorrik did seem to regard Torment as a separate entity. There's a bit of interpretation on whether this is actually the case or whether it's more of a Jekyll/Hyde situation, but I think the same could be true of Soo-Won. 

The main issue is that Edge of Destiny made it clear there was no separation of mind going on in Kralkatorrik when Snaff went into his mind - why there suddenly is in Season 4 is unclear. My theory is that the Forgotten's ritual done on Kralkatorrik caused the split persona.

Torment and Dragonvoid are related, that's pretty blatant. But my interpretation is that Dragonvoid is created from Void causing Torment in the Elder Dragons, and then the Torments merging together in the ley-lines to form Dragonvoid.

Either way, the story journal for The Only One makes one thing clear:

We successfully brought Soo-Won to the Harvest Temple and used the extractors to remove the Void from her body. Unfortunately, once the corrupted magic was out, it coalesced to form its own being and attacked us with its army. The Void's initial appearance created a shock wave that took the extractors off-line, but Taimi proposed that we could use them to contain some of the Void's power—provided we could get them back online.

As our other allies scattered to retake the outlying extractors from the Void's army, Kuunavang and I stayed to defend Taimi and Joon while they restored the primary extractor. The Void's forces overwhelmed us, and Kuunavang and I were momentarily overcome. Thankfully, Aurene pulled me from the jaws of death and infused me with some of her own power, which she instructed me to use to face the Void head-on. She didn't exaggerate its effectiveness—as I rejoined the battle, I somehow used a wave of her power to clear the entire main platform.

***
I moved on to help my allies retake the outlying extractors, facing a distinct Void manifestation on each Elder Dragon platform. Gorrik, Rama, and I defeated the manifestation of Jormag first, and then I moved on to help Canach and Sayida defeat Primordus. Then Ayumi, Ivan, and I vanquished Kralkatorrik. Again.

Around us, the threat of the Void rapidly went global. Calls from our allies around the world revealed the extent to which it had upended Hoelbrak, the Black Citadel, the Sandswept Isles, and more. Though we'd hoped to prevent that, hearing the voices of so many old friends fighting alongside us in their own parts of the world rallied my spirits.

***
After Kralkatorrik, I found Marjory fending off the shade of Mordremoth from Kasmeer's fallen body. Kas was alive, thankfully, just unconscious from giving too much of herself to get us here. When the shade was defeated, the two shared a tender moment, a celebration of still being alive.

Caithe and Logan stood at death's door in front of the final fallen dragon echo—Zhaitan. Together, we defeated the death dealer again, though Logan was wounded in the process. He convinced us to press on without him, as it was time to confront the Dragonvoid itself.

The Dragonvoid was formed after it left Soo-Won. Hell, the story journal even treats The Dragonvoid as separate from both Void and the five manifestations of the other Elder Dragons, despite the dialogue box calling each Elder Dragon manifestation "The Dragonvoid".

16 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

I'm pretty sure that's not how it happened. It's been a while since I last did the story step (I'd consider the story to be more accurate on what really happened than the strike), but when you first hit Soo-Won with the device, it fails, putting the Dragonvoid in control instead. You then work your way up through the echoes of the other dragons until you get back to being face-to-face with Dragonvoid-in-Soo-Won's-body. First phase on that top platform, the Dragonvoid sticks to using Soo-Won's abilities only, until Soo-Won's heart pops out and can be purified. Then it starts transforming, but there's no point at which we see Soo-Won regaining her body until the Dragonvoid is finally defeated.

And even then, we still need to kill her to finish it. She knows that the Dragonvoid is only temporarily subdued. It's still in her. And as long as she continues to live, it can grow again and seize control. Just as we needed to kill Trahearne to prevent Mordremoth from converting Trahearne's body into its own.

Nope. The beginning of the mission is us extracting the Void out of Soo-Won. Then the extractors overload and the Dragonvoid is formed, creating itself six new bodies.

This is why she slumped down (and noclips out of the map) after being hit, and how the Void fully outbreaks. And why the NPCs needed to split up to the five different platforms.

And unlike with the facets, the story journal all state that we defeat and destroy the Dragonvoid echoes - not absorb them.

16 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

I don't think these two points are contradictory. The Dragonvoid is what it is because what has overloaded Soo-Won to the point where she's developed her own Torment is that she's now containing pretty close to all of the magic that had previously belonged to all six Elder Dragons. And we saw within Kralkatorrik's body that these clashing magic types manifest in a form that represents that magic. When Soo-Won has nearly all the power of all of her children as well as her own, it's natural that they would manifest in the form of her children. The Dragonvoid can be an amalgamation of all six Elder Dragons and the equivalent of Torment for Soo-Won. 

Heck, this might even be an argument for it being a manifestation of magic-overload-induced-madness on the part of Soo-Won. She's a mother, so it makes sense that part of her madness might manifest in wanting to have her dead children back... and through being overloaded by their magic, she has the power to do just that. Based on what we see in Kralkatorrik, the seeds are going to be there already... she just needs to grow them and give them a personality from what she remembers them. But it's still only a facsimile of the original, which is why even the relatively talkative dragons are only a reflection of their former selves.

Either way, I think it is a fair observation that there is a natural growth from Torment to the Dragonvoid. Both were formed out of having too much magic in one form. Both have facets that represent the sources of that magic (although the Dragonvoid's are much stronger and more defined in personality). Each could be interpreted as either multiple personalities or as separate entities fighting over control of a body and the body's power (although Sane Kralkatorrik appears to have lost years ago).

The only issue is the term 'void', but that could be the result of Soo-Won's perspective of what Tyria effectively was before she did whatever it was she did in primordial times, and what she fears it will return to if it is torn apart by a magical overload.

I think the two points are as contradicting as saying charmander is the very same entity as charizard. It might be superfluous - but it's less superfluous than saying "the Mists destroy by the Skyscales dying of old age quickly".

I think the key thing is that Torment is never once brought up in End of Dragons. It's only Void, and only at the very end, Dragonvoid when it escapes the body (except some open world bits in Dragon's End which is, tbh, a bit weird - but they also forget to capitalize Void at times in open world).

I would agree that it is a natural growth from Torment to Dragonvoid - but the key thing is that Dragonvoid != Torment.

I would, however, disagree that Torment has "facets that represent the sources of that magic" - the Facets were ultimately unrelated to Kralkatorrik's Torment imo, merely fed it but wasn't part of it. The Torment wasn't any lesser for losing the facets, unlike the Dragonvoid. It was weaker because it was no longer feeding on the magic, but that was the extent of it.

[mandala.8507]

Rytlock in the Descent instance at the End of Season 4:

"Okay, where's the boom. You kill a dragon, there's supposed to be a—"

Ergo, dragons explode too.

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

6 hours ago, mandala.8507 said:

Rytlock in the Descent instance at the End of Season 4:

"Okay, where's the boom. You kill a dragon, there's supposed to be a—"

Ergo, dragons explode too.

So where was the boom for Zhaitan?
And how did Rytlock survive a point blank boom along with Marjory, Canach, Braham, Caithe, and the Commander?
And why does that boom look just a flash of light?
And where was the boom with Soo-Won? It's just a flash of light, and evaporation.

Rytlock also claims:

Rytlock Brimstone: We only handed an Elder Dragon the energy of a god. What could go wrong?

But Balthazar was no longer a god, so this statement is fundamentally wrong. Rytlock is notorious for lying and withholding information. Remember: Later, cub. He's not exactly a reliable source of information - not like our own eyes. In fact, Rytlock is ArenaNet's go-to for not explaining things (correctly).

That said, the flash of light seen with Mordremoth can indeed be described as a "boom" - if you stretch it. Though Zhaitan still lacked one entirely.

The only Elder Dragons to explode was Jormag and Primordus, and that was due to the conflicting energies - not simply their death. This was even shown with the Unstable Abomination in Season 3, where we killed it by causing explosions caused by exposure to conflicting energies.

Edited January 17, 2023 by Konig Des Todes.2086

[Fueki.4753]

25 minutes ago, Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

So where was the boom for Zhaitan?
And how did Rytlock survive a point blank boom along with Marjory, Canach, Braham, Caithe, and the Commander?
And why does that boom look just a flash of light?
And where was the boom with Soo-Won? It's just a flash of light, and evaporation.

By definition, a boom is "a loud, deep, resonant sound."

We can hear one (albeit heavily subdued to not damage players' ears), when we kill Mordremoth by stabbing Trahearne.

We don't hear one while Zhaitan falls to his death, but there was already music playing over the portion where we would hear it (there's a slight shake of the camera potentially indicating his contact with the ground). So it's fair to assume that in-universe, there was a boom. Players just can't hear it due to cinematic reasons.

When Soo-Won died, they also played music over it. But with Soo-Won, there was no indicator like the camera shake for Zhaitan.

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

23 minutes ago, Fueki.4753 said:

By definition, a boom is "a loud, deep, resonant sound."

We can hear one (albeit heavily subdued to not damage players' ears), when we kill Mordremoth by stabbing Trahearne.

We don't hear one while Zhaitan falls to his death, but there was already music playing over the portion where we would hear it (there's a slight shake of the camera potentially indicating his contact with the ground). So it's fair to assume that in-universe, there was a boom. Players just can't hear it due to cinematic reasons.

When Soo-Won died, they also played music over it. But with Soo-Won, there was no indicator like the camera shake for Zhaitan.

Technically correct, but we both know that's not what mandala meant.

Whether that's what Rytlock meant... Who knows.

[mandala.8507]

On 1/17/2023 at 9:08 AM, Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

That said, the flash of light seen with Mordremoth can indeed be described as a "boom" - if you stretch it.

I'm sure the Pact member crushed by a tree from the massive storm created by Mordremoth's death greatly appreciates you pretending it didn't happen.

This nit-picky argument is completely beside the point anyway. The point is that the lore is more cohesive than people are giving it credit for, and this lack of recognition of the greater picture is a direct result of certain players hugely overestimating their prowess in analyzing the storytelling and world-building in this game.

Bottom line is, I think you're very incorrect and you've offered no insight that would dissuade me from this opinion. I stand by my original contention that the Void has been a key concept in the lore for the majority of the lifetime of Gw2 and I would appreciate you not continuing to allow your misconceptions to harm others' ability to digest, understand, and appreciate this game's story.

[Delta.1526]

On 1/20/2023 at 10:53 AM, mandala.8507 said:

This nit-picky argument is completely beside the point anyway. The point is that the lore is more cohesive than people are giving it credit for, and this lack of recognition of the greater picture is a direct result of certain players hugely overestimating their prowess in analyzing the storytelling and world-building in this game.

 

Bottom line is, I think you're very incorrect and you've offered no insight that would dissuade me from this opinion. I stand by my original contention that the Void has been a key concept in the lore for the majority of the lifetime of Gw2 and I would appreciate you not continuing to allow your misconceptions to harm others' ability to digest, understand, and appreciate this game's story.

I'd say the story to-date of Guild Wars has been plenty cohesive, but not thoroughly planned. Like, 'the void' was namedropped in one of the earlier forays into The All, What Scarlet Saw, back in 2013:

Quote

She saw Tyria as a life-sized globe, fixed in place among cosmic storms and massive clouds of potentiality. She wondered if she would see herself in Omadd's lab when Rata Sum rotated into view, but then impatiently went on, plunging deeper into the churning void.

Stop, my child.

Ceara paused. She hadn't heard the Pale Tree's voice in years.

Please: go no further. In seeking to comprehend the forces that shape us, you will unleash them. Society cannot withstand that.

Scarlet's time at the Thaumanova Reactor (and the aftermath we see in Metrica) also introduced us to the twin concepts of  'too much magic bad', and 'lol dragon magic is chaos magic dummy' that got us where we are today. There's a clear narrative thread that runs through to EoD, for sure -- but I kind of feel like The Dragonvoid as an entity rather than an ephemeral concept of imbalance and magical turmoil was a recent addition because people kept complaining about dragons and we needed a suitable final boss to punch in the teeth and move on.

I don't necessarily think it came out of left field. Kralkatorrik's Torment set it up well in advance that magical imbalances are sentient and hate you. Belligerent Ley Line Anomalies have been rocking up since...lmao I guess Thaumanova Fractal chronologically, look at that foreshadowing!  It's also entirely fitting that the end of the Dragon Cycle would be the Prismatic Light Dragon vs Angry Shadow Dragon -- heck, if you're a Sylvari, there's a case to be made for the Shadow of the Dragon in your Dream being a slam-dunk allusion to the Dragonvoid. 

But that's the thing, so many references to 'darkness/shadow/nightfall' can refer to any segment of the story; in Core the Shadow of the Dragon was Zhaitan, then turned out it was Mordremoth...turns out light vs. dark is just a ridiculously common trope and you can read what you like into it.

Edited February 7, 2023 by Delta.1526

[Delta.1526]

On 1/16/2023 at 4:49 PM, Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

The Facets within Kralkatorrik didn't have any personality though. They were just physical manifestations of the magic, but by all indication fully mindless. The three facets never talk or anything - not even Balthazar's which looks just like him, not an avatar of him.

That said, I don't think that the facets are all that similar. The facets aren't even caricatures, they're merely representations very similar to the facets of Glint fought in GW1. A reflection of magic formed through the crystal domain - especially with the term "facet" seems omnipresent in with GW lore and crystal dragons.

 

Which I think goes a long way to argue against the notion that they're the same thing. The Story journal even calls it an Elder Dragon echo.

 

lmao sorry to be that guy, but an echo is basically just a reflection you can hear 🙃

But in all seriousness, Facets do seem to be specifically tied to Kralkatorrik and his descendants. However, Kralk is Soo-Won's scion and she does seem to have a similar, let's say habit, of segmenting magical domains. The most obvious is the Voids of X and Y that you fight in Dragon's End (wow facets are light voids are darkness, look at me i'm doing textual analysis) but the most significant split she made was at the beginning of Tyria, when she birthed the Elder Dragons to help carry her burden. They were  'mindless as Nature' to begin with, too. Sure, children aren't Facets, but they got arbitrary domains all the same. (Sidebar, Kralk was the only other Elder Dragon known to consider his descendants as his family...)
 

Leaving that aside, just having a personality doesn't meaningfully distinguish them from Facets. Aurene's  Facet of Things and Stuff collections have about as much dialogue as the Elder Dragon echoes. Voices or visions, maybe; hard to say. I'm not totally sure what Facets are but, there seems to be more to it than being 'mere reflections of magic'. 

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

8 hours ago, Delta.1526 said:

I'd say the story to-date of Guild Wars has been plenty cohesive, but not thoroughly planned. Like, 'the void' was namedropped in one of the earlier forays into The All, What Scarlet Saw, back in 2013:

"the churning void" doesn't really feel like a name drop. Just a use of a very vague and ambiguous term, like the rest of the cases. More happenstance of ArenaNet not using many synonyms.

I feel all these attempt to connect EoD's The Void with all these past mentions - both ED related and not - is like trying to argue that the sylvari's warden forces are related to the Echovald Forest's Wardens, simply because they share names. Or the old 2010 theories of the Deep Sea Dragon being located in The Deep Factions mission because both are called the deep.

 

8 hours ago, Delta.1526 said:

Scarlet's time at the Thaumanova Reactor (and the aftermath we see in Metrica) also introduced us to the twin concepts of  'too much magic bad', and 'lol dragon magic is chaos magic dummy' that got us where we are today.

To clarify, it isn't "chaos magic is dragon magic", but rather "Inquest mistook dragon magic for being chaos magic". There is a difference, and it's denoted in both the fractal and now-historical dialogue with Ellen Kiel, even during A Study in Scarlet / Connecting the Pieces from EotM release / Battle for Lion's Arch re-release.

I also wouldn't call the Ley-Line Anomalies to be belligerent, as that implies hostile intent. The Ley-Line Anomalies just run around seeking more magic, and only fight after you attack it and destroy the coalescences. If anything, players are the hostile party in that interaction, though with valid reason (anomalies explode in a magic vortex if they get too much magic and become unstable).

8 hours ago, Delta.1526 said:

But that's the thing, so many references to 'darkness/shadow/nightfall' can refer to any segment of the story; in Core the Shadow of the Dragon was Zhaitan, then turned out it was Mordremoth...turns out light vs. dark is just a ridiculously common trope and you can read what you like into it.

Exactly. While later writers did play off of earlier content, the Dragonvoid stuff wasn't actually foreshadowed prior to Season 4.

 

5 hours ago, Delta.1526 said:

lmao sorry to be that guy, but an echo is basically just a reflection you can hear 🙃

Well, "echo" is used a lot in GW terminology to be a copy of something. Revenant legends, the Mist Champions, the visions we see from Raven in IBS are all called echoes. In a wide context of GW2, "echo" is more of a copy than a reflection... though one can argue that 'reflection' is in turn a copy, I feel the use of different terminology is pretty important there.

Facets were used because of the crystal domain and terminology relation irl, while echo is just a more generic thing. Anything can create an echo, but only gemstones and crystalline structures create facets.

5 hours ago, Delta.1526 said:

Leaving that aside, just having a personality doesn't meaningfully distinguish them from Facets. Aurene's  Facet of Things and Stuff collections have about as much dialogue as the Elder Dragon echoes. Voices or visions, maybe; hard to say. I'm not totally sure what Facets are but, there seems to be more to it than being 'mere reflections of magic'. 

Depends on interpretation there, I'd argue.

Just because the weapons use lines from the related Elder Dragon, doesn't mean the weapons are speaking or anything. That said, memory crystals are an established thing from PoF with the crystal dragon family, so it wouldn't be surprised if weapons created from crystals somehow manage to copy a fragment of the Elder Dragons' memories to share. I wouldn't say this is the same kind of facet as the three facets fought inside Kralkatorrik or the GW1 facets, however, since it's just a weapon and nothing more.

[mandala.8507]

On 2/7/2023 at 9:04 PM, Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

I feel all these attempt to connect EoD's The Void with all these past mentions - both ED related and not - is like trying to argue that the sylvari's warden forces are related to the Echovald Forest's Wardens, simply because they share names.

I would argue the Echovald Wardens and the Sylvari are connected by a common purpose, hence their similar roles and name, bolstered by the bridge between their purpose and the powers behinds their very existence established by the Forever Tree events at the Southern Border of the Northern half of the forest.

But I mean, I'm not the brightest of people, so I'm probably wrong.

[Gibson.4036]

On 1/19/2023 at 6:53 PM, mandala.8507 said:

The point is that the lore is more cohesive than people are giving it credit for, and this lack of recognition of the greater picture is a direct result of certain players hugely overestimating their prowess in analyzing the storytelling and world-building in this game.

If the lore is that cohesive and the majority of players can't see it, the writers badly fumbled the delivery.

"Only the truly enlightened understand it" is the refuge of many artists who aren't as amazing as they imagine.

[mandala.8507]

28 minutes ago, Gibson.4036 said:

If the lore is that cohesive and the majority of players can't see it, the writers badly fumbled the delivery.

"Only the truly enlightened understand it" is the refuge of many artists who aren't as amazing as they imagine.

A quote from a film I've always enjoyed:

"Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called 'The Pledge'. The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course... it probably isn't. The second act is called 'The Turn'. The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the secret... but you won't find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled."

Now, I have deliberately left this quote incomplete.

When you can pinpoint the significance of my omission as it relates to the narrative of gw2, you will understand why I believe these critiques to be premature and in error.

[Gibson.4036]

13 minutes ago, mandala.8507 said:

A quote from a film I've always enjoyed:

"Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called 'The Pledge'. The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course... it probably isn't. The second act is called 'The Turn'. The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the secret... but you won't find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled."

Now, I have deliberately left this quote incomplete.

When you can pinpoint the significance of my omission as it relates to the narrative of gw2, you will understand why I believe these critiques to be premature and in error.

Yeah, that confirms what I expected.

Edited February 9, 2023 by Gibson.4036

[Delta.1526]

On 2/8/2023 at 1:04 PM, Konig Des Todes.2086 said:

ust because the weapons use lines from the related Elder Dragon, doesn't mean the weapons are speaking or anything. That said, memory crystals are an established thing from PoF with the crystal dragon family, so it wouldn't be surprised if weapons created from crystals somehow manage to copy a fragment of the Elder Dragons' memories to share. I wouldn't say this is the same kind of facet as the three facets fought inside Kralkatorrik or the GW1 facets, however, since it's just a weapon and nothing more.

I didn't even consider memory crystals actually, that's a good point. Yeah like...it's an achievement panel rather than a dragon hologram to steal elite skills from, definitely not the same, but it does seem like describing those surprisingly haunting collections as her "facets" could have further meaning. The writing's too interesting, surely it can't be totally irrelevant XD

Edited February 9, 2023 by Delta.1526