This is the very first living story release I am dissapointed with and this is why [spoilers]

[Lord Trejgon.2809]

[perhaps a bit of rant too][excuse me if wrong forum section, my 1 minute scroll didn't hint any really better, if forum mods has a better one I'd consider it a favour if he/she moved it there]

So the bigger chunk of the storyline was pretty solid althought could feel at points going slightly bit too fast. Still - solid.

Then comes the Dragon fight.We have solid plan (despite Canah whining it's crazy it is actually pretty solid) and everything seems to go - more or less - according to that plan.We blast kralk with resonating amplified crystals, inflict big wounds on him activate crystal after crystal, reading from blish's trackign device are all confirming it's working. After third crystal Kralk decides to do shiny nice combo attack used energies he absorbed from other dragons/gods (very nice touch there) which aurene repels seemingly without much effort - and that's somewhat important thing for later. Commander and aurene then goes for a finishing blow. This is where it starts going downhill. After a somewhat wonky phase of dragon spamming CCs and not really caring for long about dragonsblood spear stun, his hp drops to zero, commander suddenly collapses out of a blue and we are greeted with cutscene.

In said cutscene we see dead lifeless rock thatbears similar shape to kralks body and aurene being like "yay? we did it? he's dead?" and here comes bait and switch shenanigans, kralk suddenly somehow kcikstarts himself back to life. and "kills" aurene nearly as effortlesly (despite great wounds we've inflicted upon him) as effortlesly we've seen aurene a moment ago repelling his ultimate combo attack. Because logic I guess.

Typical "they killed him but not really" move, repeated yet another time (I didn't like it already how effortlesly joko could immobilise commander and braham while not beign even able to stand up and had to drain his bodyguards of energy to even stand up, but that scene at least had reedeming factors for that - this one has none). Ontop of that very cheesy and cheap move, we've got drama just for the point of drama of "oh noes aurene is dead nooooooooo".

And while that alone is bad enought, to leave sour taste in mouth (especially after years of praising AN's writing) it is not the end of bad news.

Next episode is season finale. from setup of this one we do know that if left unchecked kralk will just hop to mists, sit onto random uneated realm and recover fairly quick. We've also apparently now lost the entity that was supposed to replace kralk, meaning that even if we give a chase and finish him off, while he's weak, it will just make.... like whole pof plot pointless because at that point we could just as well let balthy do the job in pof - same effect except aurene could probably still be alive.

Which heavilly implies that season 4 finale will involve major deus ex machina shenanigans to make sense - or won't make sense within current story's continuity and I am unsure which is worse. You have seriously just written yourself into corner out of reasonable exit without pulling something even more cheap, cheesy or just going "and the world ended, we are closing servers , see ya in next game".

but considering story patterns so far most likely scenario I can see for finale actually happening would be aurene jokofying herself back, suddenly someone gettign that bright idea for that something that will totally work, we'll kill the kralk, the end, oooooor we'll pull some...... questionable quality stuff from the place where back looses it's noble name, to somehow freeze the clock on worlds doom, and go on voyage around the world in S5 to find meaning of life and means to get world out of that mess. I am unsure which variant is worse, both are pretty bad.

on a somewhat positive note tho, some bits of new weapons are pretty nice so here's that.

 

inb4 E4F will pull searing 2.0, tyria will get destroyed, sentient races will find a way to cross the mists to find safe place to live afetr literaly nuking out elder dragons just in case and post S5 players will be instead playing on that other world making whole thing huge pre-searing/post-searing ascalon thing, on massive scale - this way I'd have no choice but to bow to the bolls of adamantium for actually pulling that stunt off

 

[perilisk.1874]

While I don't know exactly what they'll do for the next episode, I have a feeling that it's been planned out for a while, and they've been laying the necessary groundwork throughout PoF and LS4 so it doesn't come out of nowhere. Even the ending here didn't come out of nowhere -- they basically put it in big flashing neon lights in Ep4, people just chose to believe "hey, whatever, that shouldn't happen so it won't". Oops.

[Ashantara.8731]

@"Lord Trejgon.2809" said:Typical "they killed him but not really" move, repeated yet another time (I didn't like it already how effortlesly joko could immobilise commander and braham while not beign even able to stand up and had to drain his bodyguards of energy to even stand up, but that scene at least had reedeming factors for that - this one has none). Ontop of that very cheesy and cheap move, we've got drama just for the point of drama of "oh noes aurene is dead nooooooooo".

In retrospect, I kind of agree with that sentiment. The writing was on point, the dramatic ending hit you right in the guts. But it just did ruin everything our character and their allies have worked towards for years. Obviously, the point is that now we need to find other means to defeat Kralkatorrik (maybe put him to sleep, too? or convince him to become our friend? [harhar]), and I guess that's what they wanted - a plot device (in this case Aurene's death) to drag the story on further. Blargh... enough! :s

 

inb4 E4F will pull searing 2.0, tyria will get destroyed, sentient races will find a way to cross the mists to find safe place to live afetr literaly nuking out elder dragons just in case and post S5 players will be instead playing on that other world making whole thing huge pre-searing/post-searing ascalon thing, on massive scale - this way I'd have no choice but to bow to the bolls of adamantium for actually pulling that stunt off

 

Oh geez, that could actually get me to quit GW2 altogether. Seriously.

[Lord Trejgon.2809]

on a couple more of positive notes, visually the finall instance was very impressive, and from technical point of view it was very well made.

But I still think that if you really wanted to kill off (or pull a joko on) aurene it should be delivered differently - namely something should go wrong in the plan, I don't know thirs crystal gets destroyed before we get there or something. The way it is right now it's simplyeverything goes according to a plan -> we win -> except we didn't

@"perilisk.1874" said:While I don't know exactly what they'll do for the next episode, I have a feeling that it's been planned out for a while, and they've been laying the necessary groundwork throughout PoF and LS4 so it doesn't come out of nowhere. Even the ending here didn't come out of nowhere -- they basically put it in big flashing neon lights in Ep4, people just chose to believe "hey, whatever, that shouldn't happen so it won't". Oops.

I have no doubts that they have timeline plan for further episodes made already, but considering timing, things that happened, and setup of whole situation, I simply cannot see it going in any good quality storywriting direction from here, especially not without cheapening whole thing even more (as if it wasn't cheap enought on its own)

They took 2 years to setup that we can't blindly kill EDs anymore, setup aurene as only possible solution to that problem, ep4 have put tyria's very fabric of reality on clock, and already within ep5 it is stated that kralk can recover from great wounds by just eating another realm in the mists. with all of that in mind without aurene we are without solution to the problem of unleashing volatile magic on ED death, without even bait to lure kralk into fight on our terms again, and in the outcome of the confrontation we are even without ability to make more weaponry against him. Which literaly sets up 3 possibilities - aurene wil be somehow back (jokofying as I called it earlier) which cheapens her "death" now even more, or some random sudden very handy deus ex machina will come into play in ep 6 very conveniently to solve all our problems (very bad writing practice), or world ends because there no matter what tyrians will do they are out of "safe it all" options.

@Ashantara.8731 said:

 

inb4 E4F will pull searing 2.0, tyria will get destroyed, sentient races will find a way to cross the mists to find safe place to live afetr literaly nuking out elder dragons

just in case

and post S5 players will be instead playing on that other world making whole thing huge pre-searing/post-searing ascalon thing, on massive scale - this way I'd have no choice but to bow to the bolls of adamantium for actually pulling that stunt off

 

Oh geez, that could actually get me to quit GW2 altogether. Seriously.

This is exacly why it would be extremely ballsy move xD

[Cyninja.2954]

See, and here I was very happy with the ending and setup. It gets very boring if you simply run a checklist of which dragon you have killed/handeled after x amount of living world.

Then again, I enjoy the non dragon related story content a lot more and the world building attached to the original GW1 lore.

Now you are entitled to your opinion, but I do find some of your complaints misplaced:

@Lord Trejgon.2809 said:Typical "they killed him but not really" move, repeated yet another time (I didn't like it already how effortlesly joko could immobilise commander and braham while not beign even able to stand up and had to drain his bodyguards of energy to even stand up, but that scene at least had reedeming factors for that - this one has none). Ontop of that very cheesy and cheap move, we've got drama just for the point of drama of "oh noes aurene is dead nooooooooo".

Yes, it must be nice to view the story as a omniscient being from the 4th dimension who automatically connects the dots and makes assumptions. To a character in the world, seeing some one pass, even if it's a dragon teen who you invested time in and put a lot of hope in, is very reasonable. Taimi and the characters do not have the gift of foresight or outside of game knowledge.

@Lord Trejgon.2809 said:like whole pof plot pointless because at that point we could just as well let balthy do the job in pof - same effect except aurene could probably still be alive.

Sure, the major difference being Balthazar wanted to re-power himself making the energies run rampant and destroying Tyria in the process. Aurene being potentially dead (we don't know yet what is planned to solve this conundrum) is that much more critical to the characters in the story. Their only hope literally just died in front of their eyes.

@Lord Trejgon.2809 said:We have solid plan (despite Canah whining it's crazy it is actually pretty solid) and everything seems to go - more or less - according to that plan.

So preparation time getting cut short from weeks to days is according to plan? I found it much more disturbing that Taimi was able to reverse engineer Dredge tech within seconds than any of the other things in the story. The plan wasn't solid, it was heavily improvised and the story made sure you know this, even if the it was intentionally upbeat.

@Lord Trejgon.2809 said:After third crystal Kralk decides to do shiny nice combo attack used energies he absorbed from other dragons/gods (very nice touch there) which aurene repels seemingly without much effort - and that's somewhat important thing for later.

Aurene does not repel Kralkatoriks attack. Braham does and Aurene enhances his shield, replay the episode.

Also the attack was not a point blank in Kralkatoriks face, as the later one.

My feeling is you simply do not like the path the story took. Which is fine. Some of your points were off and/or unfair I think. You've also been inattentive in some of the things going on both during the Balthazar story arc as well as this one.

What would have been your preferred scenario? Kalk dies pre season finale, we check off this dragon, Aurene powers up to be ready for the next dragon and we simply move on? Seems even cheesier than the current state and way more boring.

EDIT: also remember, much of the speculation about Aurene reviving etc is based on conversations which only the player character, only part of the main characters or none were present (like Glint talking to Aurene this episode).

[Randulf.7614]

I have no real issue with the end, it was a bit of a silly fight, but overall it kinda worked and was def cool to look at visually. Aurene dying i was pretty thankful for, but since itll likely be part of the plan, the impact will be gone when all is done. For this i can understand some of the criticism of it. The problem is, the dilly dallying around killing-but not killing-but killing dragon plot has really hurt the narrative over the years. If you tried to write out the story so far and presented it as one, it would be ridiculous. Sometimes it presents itself as being made up as it goes along.

My real issue lies in the lacklustre build up and prob the weakest ls map yet. Despite being of decent size, it is barely utilised at all, with only a handful of events outside of the two metas. The contrast between the stunning Jahai Bluffs previously whch was rich in events, lore, stories etc is stark. To me, this was a Dragon fight episode which they felt the need to tag a map onto and add some basic lead up.

The only positive i can gleam is that we have now had our two obligatory poor episodes in 3 and 5, just like ls3 had in 3 and 6 (my opinion). Ep 6 needs to be a return to form and season 5 needs to address consistency.

It is great for the game that so many loved it, but for me it was a huge drop in quality with so much many have complained about in past episodes, glaringly present here.

[Westenev.5289]

I have to admit, I did have a bit of a giggle when my character collapsed - despite the gravity of the situation, the shot kralkatorik made seemed so improbable I couldn't help but call bullkitten. We were prepared for a scripted energy beam, a falling rock or a rampaging dragon - but instead, Kralk saw fit to deal with us by unleashing his ultimate secret techique - plot-aimed projectile drool.

Well played, Kralky.

[Blur.3465]

I am grateful for the tone and turn of the story. It is about time GW2 took on a more serious, tragic and dark approach.All this time I felt no 'weight' or depth in the story, unlike in this episode. Now here I was absolutely glued to the game and I feel more tied to the game now than ever before.It is exactly what I expected and wanted from GW storytelling. This is the right step.Now whatever the outcome is, I am grateful to this episode and this ending.The part where we...

! ...are wounded and going through the hallway, worrying sick about Aurene and then Taimi screaming and the grim sight being revealed with "I don't know..." just got me entirely.

Perfect, just perfect and I hope we stick more to the darker tone of the story from now on.

EDIT: The music, oh the music! It's perfect in this episode and adds to the immersion and depth as well. This is the best episode for me!

[Vayne.8563]

@"Lord Trejgon.2809" said:[perhaps a bit of rant too][excuse me if wrong forum section, my 1 minute scroll didn't hint any really better, if forum mods has a better one I'd consider it a favour if he/she moved it there]

So the bigger chunk of the storyline was pretty solid althought could feel at points going slightly bit too fast. Still - solid.

Then comes the Dragon fight.We have solid plan (despite Canah whining it's crazy it is actually pretty solid) and everything seems to go - more or less - according to that plan.We blast kralk with resonating amplified crystals, inflict big wounds on him activate crystal after crystal, reading from blish's trackign device are all confirming it's working. After third crystal Kralk decides to do shiny nice combo attack used energies he absorbed from other dragons/gods (very nice touch there) which aurene repels seemingly without much effort - and that's somewhat important thing for later. Commander and aurene then goes for a finishing blow. This is where it starts going downhill. After a somewhat wonky phase of dragon spamming CCs and not really caring for long about dragonsblood spear stun, his hp drops to zero, commander suddenly collapses out of a blue and we are greeted with cutscene.

In said cutscene we see dead lifeless rock thatbears similar shape to kralks body and aurene being like "yay? we did it? he's dead?" and here comes bait and switch shenanigans, kralk suddenly somehow kcikstarts himself back to life. and "kills" aurene nearly as effortlesly (despite great wounds we've inflicted upon him) as effortlesly we've seen aurene a moment ago repelling his ultimate combo attack. Because logic I guess.

Typical "they killed him but not really" move, repeated yet another time (I didn't like it already how effortlesly joko could immobilise commander and braham while not beign even able to stand up and had to drain his bodyguards of energy to even stand up, but that scene at least had reedeming factors for that - this one has none). Ontop of that very cheesy and cheap move, we've got drama just for the point of drama of "oh noes aurene is dead nooooooooo".

And while that alone is bad enought, to leave sour taste in mouth (especially after years of praising AN's writing) it is not the end of bad news.

Next episode is season finale. from setup of this one we do know that if left unchecked kralk will just hop to mists, sit onto random uneated realm and recover fairly quick. We've also apparently now lost the entity that was supposed to replace kralk, meaning that even if we give a chase and finish him off, while he's weak, it will just make.... like whole pof plot pointless because at that point we could just as well let balthy do the job in pof - same effect except aurene could probably still be alive.

Which heavilly implies that season 4 finale will involve major deus ex machina shenanigans to make sense - or won't make sense within current story's continuity and I am unsure which is worse. You have seriously just written yourself into corner out of reasonable exit without pulling something even more cheap, cheesy or just going "and the world ended, we are closing servers , see ya in next game".

but considering story patterns so far most likely scenario I can see for finale actually happening would be aurene jokofying herself back, suddenly someone gettign that bright idea for that something that will totally work, we'll kill the kralk, the end, oooooor we'll pull some...... questionable quality stuff from the place where back looses it's noble name, to somehow freeze the clock on worlds doom, and go on voyage around the world in S5 to find meaning of life and means to get world out of that mess. I am unsure which variant is worse, both are pretty bad.

on a somewhat positive note tho, some bits of new weapons are pretty nice so here's that.

 

inb4 E4F will pull searing 2.0, tyria will get destroyed, sentient races will find a way to cross the mists to find safe place to live afetr literaly nuking out elder dragons just in case and post S5 players will be instead playing on that other world making whole thing huge pre-searing/post-searing ascalon thing, on massive scale - this way I'd have no choice but to bow to the bolls of adamantium for actually pulling that stunt off

 

I disagree that they can't solve this with the threads already woven to make perfect sense in the next chapter. Perhaps there's something you're not considering. I won't share my suspicion here, because I think it's likely and I'd consider it a predictive spoiler, but if you pm me I'll let you know how I think they can change it without it being Deus Ex Machina.

[ShiningSquirrel.3751]

There is an official feedback thread for this episode.https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/65226/official-feedback-thread-lws4-episode-5-all-or-nothing

[ZeftheWicked.3076]

I would be dissapointed if Kralkatorrik was so easy to get rid of. Let's remember this is new and improved (Zhaithan + Mordremoth + Balthazar enchanced) version. For the same old plan (Dragon Blood Spear) to work flawlessly is a bit much to ask.

[Mikali.9651]

@Randulf.7614 said:I have no real issue with the end, it was a bit of a silly fight, but overall it kinda worked and was def cool to look at visually. Aurene dying i was pretty thankful for, but since itll likely be part of the plan, the impact will be gone when all is done. For this i can understand some of the criticism of it. The problem is, the dilly dallying around killing-but not killing-but killing dragon plot has really hurt the narrative over the years. If you tried to write out the story so far and presented it as one, it would be ridiculous. Sometimes it presents itself as being made up as it goes along.

My real issue lies in the lacklustre build up and prob the weakest ls map yet. Despite being of decent size, it is barely utilised at all, with only a handful of events outside of the two metas. The contrast between the stunning Jahai Bluffs previously whch was rich in events, lore, stories etc is stark. To me, this was a Dragon fight episode which they felt the need to tag a map onto and add some basic lead up.

The only positive i can gleam is that we have now had our two obligatory poor episodes in 3 and 5, just like ls3 had in 3 and 6 (my opinion). Ep 6 needs to be a return to form and season 5 needs to address consistency.

It is great for the game that so many loved it, but for me it was a huge drop in quality with so much many have complained about in past episodes, glaringly present here.

There is no ep. 6. This was the last of this season.

[Lord Trejgon.2809]

@Cyninja.2954 said:See, and here I was very happy with the ending and setup. It gets very boring if you simply run a checklist of which dragon you have killed/handeled after x amount of living world.

Then again, I enjoy the non dragon related story content a lot more and the world building attached to the original GW1 lore.

Now you are entitled to your opinion, but I do find some of your complaints misplaced:

@Lord Trejgon.2809 said:Typical "they killed him but not really" move, repeated yet another time (I didn't like it already how effortlesly joko could immobilise commander and braham while not beign even able to stand up and had to drain his bodyguards of energy to even stand up, but that scene at least had reedeming factors for that - this one has none). Ontop of that very cheesy and cheap move, we've got drama just for the point of drama of "oh noes aurene is dead nooooooooo".

Yes, it must be nice to view the story as a omniscient being from the 4th dimension who automatically connects the dots and makes assumptions. To a character in the world, seeing some one pass, even if it's a dragon teen who you invested time in and put a lot of hope in, is very reasonable. Taimi and the characters do not have the gift of foresight or outside of game knowledge.

When you write a story you write it for someone to receive it and you can't use that argument against complaint of bad use/overuse of a trope

@Lord Trejgon.2809 said:like whole pof plot pointless because at that point we could just as well let balthy do the job in pof - same effect except aurene could probably still be alive.

Sure, the major difference being Balthazar wanted to re-power himself making the energies run rampant and destroying Tyria in the process. Aurene being potentially dead (we don't know yet what is planned to solve this conundrum) is that much more critical to the characters in the story. Their only hope literally just died in front of their eyes.

Balthy wanted to kill kralk - without bothering about consequences to tyria which was major reason why we had to stop him - but without aurene (or deus ex replacement for her) options gets narrowed down to "just" kill kralk - same thing as balthazar intended - or not kill kralk at all - which means that next couple episodes we'll see how fabric of reality gets consumed and tyria dies :shrug:

(Balthazar's motivations were fairly simple there - he wanted a fight and he wanted to win that find no matter the cost)

@Lord Trejgon.2809 said:We have solid plan (despite Canah whining it's crazy it is actually pretty solid) and everything seems to go - more or less - according to that plan.

So preparation time getting cut short from weeks to days is according to plan? I found it much more disturbing that Taimi was able to reverse engineer Dredge tech within seconds than any of the other things in the story. The plan wasn't solid, it was heavily improvised and the story made sure you know this, even if the it was intentionally upbeat.

Time was made up after the announcement of prep time being cut down if you didn't notice - whole idea with resonance crystals came up after it turned out that we won't have time to make enought dragonblood weaponry to arm whole army at our disposal. The only weak chain of that plan was reverse engineering resonance enhancers by taimi, but considering how dredge are fairly low-tech compared to asura, and considering previous achievements of our little asura there this does not get out of scope of story's continuity.

We lure kralk to fight on our ground on our terms, exploit his weakness to his own resonance frequency, after trapping it into typical anti-dragon trap (cathing his head into it and locking it there) and during the course of battle taimi confirms that reading from tracker confirms that it is working, and it worked until suddenly ED decided to not stay dead.

@Lord Trejgon.2809 said:After third crystal Kralk decides to do shiny nice combo attack used energies he absorbed from other dragons/gods (very nice touch there) which aurene repels seemingly without much effort - and that's somewhat important thing for later.

Aurene does not repel Kralkatoriks attack. Braham does and Aurene enhances his shield, replay the episode.

braham sets up his own shield, beforehand but it's aurene who intercepts it with flash of aurene-brand - braham collapses just after that mumbling something about he totally could do it

Also the attack was not a point blank in Kralkatoriks face, as the later one.

and the later one was not even comparable in it's scope to the previous one. ("combo-attack" was big chargeup ult like attack, the one that overpowered aurene was basic breath that kralk spammed at every ocasion he could get)

My feeling is you simply do not like the path the story took. Which is fine. Some of your points were off and/or unfair I think. You've also been inattentive in some of the things going on both during the Balthazar story arc as well as this one.

it is not just about path the story took but delivery of that - sure people say they felt gut punched on aurene death, but I personally felt cheated out of a well deserved win. Aside from 2 years build-up of how aurene is our only hope, if they wanted that loose, the trap plan should collapse earlier for it to feel believable to my standards.

What would have been your preferred scenario? Kalk dies pre season finale, we check off this dragon, Aurene powers up to be ready for the next dragon and we simply move on? Seems even cheesier than the current state and way more boring.

My prefered scenario would probably involve couple of changes prior to this episode probably, but given set-up of the trailer alone I would expect this episode focused solely on preparations to confront kralk and finale being one huge epic scale bossfight. but no, they just had to force the fight early because "oh noes kralk is eating domain of the lost" and get themselves into that trap.

EDIT: also remember, much of the speculation about Aurene reviving etc is based on conversations which only the player character, only part of the main characters or none were present (like Glint talking to Aurene this episode).

yes I mentioned it as once of alternative where story can go from now (specified it as jokofying aurene), but that only enforce that current "death" of aurene as drama insertion for the sole sake of drama insertion. If they really needed that death to be there for story reasons (after slightly bit more time of thinking I have got few ideas on how that could be intended to be resolved assuming she dies here) but then again - the delivery of death itself feels forced just for teh sake of having it there - you win the big bossfight only for that boss to suddenly reawake and roflstomp you anyway.

@"Vayne.8563" said:I disagree that they can't solve this with the threads already woven to make perfect sense in the next chapter. Perhaps there's something you're not considering. I won't share my suspicion here, because I think it's likely and I'd consider it a predictive spoiler, but if you pm me I'll let you know how I think they can change it without it being Deus Ex Machina.

if you are thinking of same thing I am thinking you are thinking, then it still cheapens the point of aurene's death in here only amplying the feel of it being forced.

Bottomline being considering whole setup options are 3: aurene will come back(1) we'll spend exacly one episode to find alternative magic sharer(2), tyria gets destroyed<kralk eats the mists or tyrians will go "screw it we'll die anyway" rampage over EDs(3)

anything that won't fit 3 above will be within "won't make sense/won't mantain consistency" (sure we can just forget that ep4 have put tyria's time on the hard limit untill we deal with kralk ;), for kralk's sudden change of heart and decision to be good dragon after all I'd not hope, altho that could be actually funny to see)

@ZeftheWicked.3076 said:I would be dissapointed if Kralkatorrik was so easy to get rid of. Let's remember this is new and improved (Zhaithan + Mordremoth + Balthazar enchanced) version. For the same old plan (Dragon Blood Spear) to work flawlessly is a bit much to ask.

This is exacly why in my prefered scenario above I'd not be forcing early fight in ep5 (assuming no changes to episodes 1-4 that is)

if ep4 didn't happen the way it did happen (whole deal about kralk literaly eating the mists) I could prolly see end of s4 on crushing defeat against kralk, and then have spend whole s5 on finding a better approach, but since it did happen and since AN felt like forcing more and more urgency with every episode.... well I hope you see where I am coming :)

and then big chunk of problem here is that by all in-game account the new plan did work (nearly) flawlessly until post-battle cutscene. If whole plan collapsed in the middle of execution, then I'd probably spend next week in hype-speculation how we are going to continue without aurene instead of making threads on forums about how dissapointing it was ;)

 

best proof aurene is not truelly dead! we can still channel her magic to our mounts abilities from dragon champion mastery line...... :P

 

[Lord Trejgon.2809]

@Mikali.9651 said:

@Randulf.7614 said:I have no real issue with the end, it was a bit of a silly fight, but overall it kinda worked and was def cool to look at visually. Aurene dying i was pretty thankful for, but since itll likely be part of the plan, the impact will be gone when all is done. For this i can understand some of the criticism of it. The problem is, the dilly dallying around killing-but not killing-but killing dragon plot has really hurt the narrative over the years. If you tried to write out the story so far and presented it as one, it would be ridiculous. Sometimes it presents itself as being made up as it goes along.

My real issue lies in the lacklustre build up and prob the weakest ls map yet. Despite being of decent size, it is barely utilised at all, with only a handful of events outside of the two metas. The contrast between the stunning Jahai Bluffs previously whch was rich in events, lore, stories etc is stark. To me, this was a Dragon fight episode which they felt the need to tag a map onto and add some basic lead up.

The only positive i can gleam is that we have now had our two obligatory poor episodes in 3 and 5, just like ls3 had in 3 and 6 (my opinion). Ep 6 needs to be a return to form and season 5 needs to address consistency.

It is great for the game that so many loved it, but for me it was a huge drop in quality with so much many have complained about in past episodes, glaringly present here.

There is no ep. 6. This was the last of this season.

source on that? last time I checked official stance was 6 episodes per season, and this one was not advertised as finale.(the premise of finale being next episode is in case you didn;t notice big chunk of complaint basis here)

[ProtoGunner.4953]

Imo my biggest problem with the whole story since a while is that everything is so convoluted and absurd with dragons being in the mists and with consuming magic etc. And everything we had from GW1 was killed off within a short episode (Mursaat, Joko). I really wish they go back to GW1 with more or less comprehensible, worldly problems instead of this mumbo jumbo. Some magic isn't bad but every time I hear the asuras (Snaff, Blish, Taimi) talk technobabble I just shrug and say 'ok...'.

[Yumenei.7943]

I don’t know if it was mentioned here before (didn’t read all the posts), but it all goes according to the plan. There is a reason why prophecy stated that Lich has to be killed before Kralk. Dragons consume magic. Aurene got some powers from Balthazar and recently she consumed all of Joko’s power and he specialty was immortality... I would be surprised if she didn’t make a come back in the next episode. Her death was meant to be WTF moment for players, but just like in a good movie - there will be a nice plot twist soon and it will make sense, because everything points towards this resolution.

[Lord Trejgon.2809]

@"Omernon.9762" said:I don’t know if it was mentioned here before (didn’t read all the posts), but it all goes according to the plan. There is a reason why prophecy stated that Lich has to be killed before Kralk. Dragons consume magic. Aurene got some powers from Balthazar and recently she consumed all of Joko’s power and he specialty was immortality... I would be surprised if she didn’t make a come back in the next episode. Her death was meant to be kitten moment for players, but just like in a good movie - there will be a nice plot twist soon and it will make sense, because everything points towards this resolution.

Except it was delivered in such a way that if that's the case then she literaly died "because plot demanded so". If that's what AN was aiming for then I'd say the overal battle plan should collapse earlier leading to aurene sacrificing herself to protect the rest (or something along the lines)

What we've got was win-that-suddenly-wasn't-win and another dirty use of "it-seems-dead-but-it's-not" (former one being joko)

[Randulf.7614]

@Mikali.9651 said:

@Randulf.7614 said:I have no real issue with the end, it was a bit of a silly fight, but overall it kinda worked and was def cool to look at visually. Aurene dying i was pretty thankful for, but since itll likely be part of the plan, the impact will be gone when all is done. For this i can understand some of the criticism of it. The problem is, the dilly dallying around killing-but not killing-but killing dragon plot has really hurt the narrative over the years. If you tried to write out the story so far and presented it as one, it would be ridiculous. Sometimes it presents itself as being made up as it goes along.

My real issue lies in the lacklustre build up and prob the weakest ls map yet. Despite being of decent size, it is barely utilised at all, with only a handful of events outside of the two metas. The contrast between the stunning Jahai Bluffs previously whch was rich in events, lore, stories etc is stark. To me, this was a Dragon fight episode which they felt the need to tag a map onto and add some basic lead up.

The only positive i can gleam is that we have now had our two obligatory poor episodes in 3 and 5, just like ls3 had in 3 and 6 (my opinion). Ep 6 needs to be a return to form and season 5 needs to address consistency.

It is great for the game that so many loved it, but for me it was a huge drop in quality with so much many have complained about in past episodes, glaringly present here.

There is no ep. 6. This was the last of this season.

I believe they stated in one of their previous videos it is 6 episodes

[Cyninja.2954]

@Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:See, and here I was very happy with the ending and setup. It gets very boring if you simply run a checklist of which dragon you have killed/handeled after x amount of living world.

Then again, I enjoy the non dragon related story content a lot more and the world building attached to the original GW1 lore.

Now you are entitled to your opinion, but I do find some of your complaints misplaced:

@Lord Trejgon.2809 said:Typical "they killed him but not really" move, repeated yet another time (I didn't like it already how effortlesly joko could immobilise commander and braham while not beign even able to stand up and had to drain his bodyguards of energy to even stand up, but that scene at least had reedeming factors for that - this one has none). Ontop of that very cheesy and cheap move, we've got drama just for the point of drama of "oh noes aurene is dead nooooooooo".

Yes, it must be nice to view the story as a omniscient being from the 4th dimension who automatically connects the dots and makes assumptions. To a character in the world, seeing some one pass, even if it's a dragon teen who you invested time in and put a lot of hope in, is very reasonable. Taimi and the characters do not have the gift of foresight or outside of game knowledge.

When you write a story you write it for someone to receive it and you can't use that argument against complaint of bad use/overuse of a trope

True, but you are judging character actions and reactions from a position of omniscience. Any other reaction from in-game characters would have been unbelievable. Trope or not, those are two different issues.

@Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Lord Trejgon.2809 said:like whole pof plot pointless because at that point we could just as well let balthy do the job in pof - same effect except aurene could probably still be alive.

Sure, the major difference being Balthazar wanted to re-power himself making the energies run rampant and destroying Tyria in the process. Aurene being potentially dead (we don't know yet what is planned to solve this conundrum) is that much more critical to the characters in the story. Their only hope literally just died in front of their eyes.

Balthy wanted to kill kralk - without bothering about consequences to tyria which was major reason why we had to stop him - but without aurene (or deus ex replacement for her) options gets narrowed down to "just" kill kralk - same thing as balthazar intended - or not kill kralk at all - which means that next couple episodes we'll see how fabric of reality gets consumed and tyria dies :shrug:

(Balthazar's motivations were fairly simple there - he wanted a fight and he wanted to win that find no matter the cost)

Yes, so they will (Arenanet) have to come up with more story to resolve this issue. Maybe you should stop making assumptions about how the story continues and just enjoy the story that is presented to you now.

@Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Lord Trejgon.2809 said:We have solid plan (despite Canah whining it's crazy it is actually pretty solid) and everything seems to go - more or less - according to that plan.

So preparation time getting cut short from weeks to days is according to plan? I found it much more disturbing that Taimi was able to reverse engineer Dredge tech within seconds than any of the other things in the story. The plan wasn't solid, it was heavily improvised and the story made sure you know this, even if the it was intentionally upbeat.

Time was made up after the announcement of prep time being cut down if you didn't notice - whole idea with resonance crystals came up after it turned out that we won't have time to make enought dragonblood weaponry to arm whole army at our disposal. The only weak chain of that plan was reverse engineering resonance enhancers by taimi, but considering how dredge are fairly low-tech compared to asura, and considering previous achievements of our little asura there this does not get out of scope of story's continuity.

We lure kralk to fight on our ground on our terms, exploit his weakness to his own resonance frequency, after trapping it into typical anti-dragon trap (cathing his head into it and locking it there) and during the course of battle taimi confirms that reading from tracker confirms that it is working, and it worked until suddenly ED decided to not stay dead.

You don't make up weeks of preparation with everything done. Again, the plan in place was improvised to the best ability. Yes, the upbeat feeling and tone was intentional to make the twist hurt more. There is enough people who were caught off and by surprise going by the forum reactions.

@Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Lord Trejgon.2809 said:After third crystal Kralk decides to do shiny nice combo attack used energies he absorbed from other dragons/gods (very nice touch there) which aurene repels seemingly without much effort - and that's somewhat important thing for later.

Aurene does not repel Kralkatoriks attack. Braham does and Aurene enhances his shield, replay the episode.

braham sets up his own shield, beforehand but it's aurene who intercepts it with flash of aurene-brand - braham collapses just after that mumbling something about he totally could do it

He says: told you I could.

That literally indicates that it was HIS shield which protected us (obviously enhanced by Aurene). Again you were not paying attention closely.

@Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:Also the attack was not a point blank in Kralkatoriks face, as the later one.

and the later one was not even comparable in it's scope to the previous one. ("combo-attack" was big chargeup ult like attack, the one that overpowered aurene was basic breath that kralk spammed at every ocasion he could get)

Again, point-blank, in a death struggle very likely not conserving any stength any longer. There are a ton of reasonable explanation why a focused blast at the end would be more powerful.

@Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:My feeling is you simply do not like the path the story took. Which is fine. Some of your points were off and/or unfair I think. You've also been inattentive in some of the things going on both during the Balthazar story arc as well as this one.

it is not just about path the story took but delivery of that - sure people say they felt gut punched on aurene death, but I personally felt cheated out of a well deserved win. Aside from 2 years build-up of how aurene is our only hope, if they wanted that loose, the trap plan should collapse earlier for it to feel believable to my standards.

A well deserved win? How many living world episodes did you spend on fighting Kralkarotik? 2? The dragon who literally consumed a huge amount of power from Balthazar AND went rampant for ages in the desert accumulating power AND gorged itsself in other dimensions before this fight. You feel cheated because a improvised rush rush plan did not lead to success? Okay.

@Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:What would have been your preferred scenario? Kalk dies pre season finale, we check off this dragon, Aurene powers up to be ready for the next dragon and we simply move on? Seems even cheesier than the current state and way more boring.

My prefered scenario would probably involve couple of changes prior to this episode probably, but given set-up of the trailer alone I would expect this episode focused solely on preparations to confront kralk and finale being one huge epic scale bossfight. but no, they just had to force the fight early because "oh noes kralk is eating domain of the lost" and get themselves into that trap.

They did not have to force the fight early. Obviously the final fight with Kralkatorik was not today. I guess the writers figured it is way more interesting to spice things up with the first living episode in 2019 by throwing in a wrench, instead of just making a boring "we are amassing our forces" filler episode.

@Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

EDIT: also remember, much of the speculation about Aurene reviving etc is based on conversations which only the player character, only part of the main characters or none were present (like Glint talking to Aurene this episode).

yes I mentioned it as once of alternative where story can go from now (specified it as jokofying aurene), but that only enforce that current "death" of aurene as drama insertion for the sole sake of drama insertion. If they really needed that death to be there for story reasons (after slightly bit more time of thinking I have got few ideas on how that could be intended to be resolved assuming she dies here) but then again - the delivery of death itself feels forced just for teh sake of having it there - you win the big bossfight only for that boss to suddenly reawake and roflstomp you anyway.

Of corse it is drama insertion. How boring would be a strait line of: new elder dragon -> amass allies and forces -> kill elder dragon -> new elder dragon -> rinse and repeat. That's the most boring story path there could be.

EDIT: just to be clear, you have every right to feel disappointed or dislike the story. That is a purely subjective feeling and not everyone will like the choices made, that's impossible. It's just that I think some of the points you brought up can be viewed or interpreted differently. Here is hoping you will take a liking to the story further down the road.

[Yumenei.7943]

@Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

@"Omernon.9762" said:I don’t know if it was mentioned here before (didn’t read all the posts), but it all goes according to the plan. There is a reason why prophecy stated that Lich has to be killed before Kralk. Dragons consume magic. Aurene got some powers from Balthazar and recently she consumed all of Joko’s power and he specialty was immortality... I would be surprised if she didn’t make a come back in the next episode. Her death was meant to be kitten moment for players, but just like in a good movie - there will be a nice plot twist soon and it will make sense, because everything points towards this resolution.

Except it was delivered in such a way that if that's the case then she literaly died "because plot demanded so". If that's what AN was aiming for then I'd say the overal battle plan should collapse earlier leading to aurene sacrificing herself to protect the rest (or something along the lines)

What we've got was win-that-suddenly-wasn't-win and another dirty use of "it-seems-dead-but-it's-not" (former one being joko)

Yea, all of it is true. But if you start watching American movies (Hollywood, Netflix etc.) then you’ll quickly get used to rather foreseeable storylines and lack of internal logic. It’s like a hamburger from McDonald’s - it has a nice taste, one that most consumers enjoy and know very well, but in reality it is nothing special. After some time you’ll just get used to it and you’ll stop complaining.

Same thing with this storyline - it just screams Hollywood at you. It’s obvious, it’s based on very popular among writers plot twists, but it is also something people like to see, even if it is really obvious how this one will unfold.

[sorudo.9054]

i dunno why ppl complain about this particular episode, of all the episodes this game has this one has by far the best story telling.it makes you expect a success, makes you expect everything goes as planned, makes you think that you're completely prepared for whatever comes.and then it hits you right where you least expect, both aurene and the whole dragon aspect merge made the story something interesting.i expected to totally win, even if aurene was absorbed by the last blast i expected to kill krak.

no really, if you think this episode is bad then i have bad news for you, everything before this episode is tons worse.

[Biff.5312]

How about Joko comes back, and he and Kralk mutually destroy one-another, so Joko's legacy will be redeemed as savior to Tyria.

Or whatever. I don't care about the story.

[Lord Trejgon.2809]

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:See, and here I was very happy with the ending and setup. It gets very boring if you simply run a checklist of which dragon you have killed/handeled after x amount of living world.

Then again, I enjoy the non dragon related story content a lot more and the world building attached to the original GW1 lore.

Now you are entitled to your opinion, but I do find some of your complaints misplaced:

@Lord Trejgon.2809 said:Typical "they killed him but not really" move, repeated yet another time (I didn't like it already how effortlesly joko could immobilise commander and braham while not beign even able to stand up and had to drain his bodyguards of energy to even stand up, but that scene at least had reedeming factors for that - this one has none). Ontop of that very cheesy and cheap move, we've got drama just for the point of drama of "oh noes aurene is dead nooooooooo".

Yes, it must be nice to view the story as a omniscient being from the 4th dimension who automatically connects the dots and makes assumptions. To a character in the world, seeing some one pass, even if it's a dragon teen who you invested time in and put a lot of hope in, is very reasonable. Taimi and the characters do not have the gift of foresight or outside of game knowledge.

When you write a story you write it for someone to receive it and you can't use that argument against complaint of bad use/overuse of a trope

True, but you are judging character actions and reactions from a position of omniscience. Any other reaction from in-game characters would have been unbelievable. Trope or not, those are two different issues.

And I wasn't judging character actions and reactions from position of omniscience, but was expressing dissapointment at the structure of the plotline? I'm not sure what's your point in here at this point.

@Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Lord Trejgon.2809 said:like whole pof plot pointless because at that point we could just as well let balthy do the job in pof - same effect except aurene could probably still be alive.

Sure, the major difference being Balthazar wanted to re-power himself making the energies run rampant and destroying Tyria in the process. Aurene being potentially dead (we don't know yet what is planned to solve this conundrum) is that much more critical to the characters in the story. Their only hope literally just died in front of their eyes.

Balthy wanted to kill kralk - without bothering about consequences to tyria which was major reason why we had to stop him - but without aurene (or deus ex replacement for her) options gets narrowed down to "just" kill kralk - same thing as balthazar intended - or not kill kralk at all - which means that next couple episodes we'll see how fabric of reality gets consumed and tyria dies :shrug:

(Balthazar's motivations were fairly simple there - he wanted a fight and he wanted to win that find no matter the cost)

Yes, so they will (Arenanet) have to come up with more story to resolve this issue. Maybe you should stop making assumptions about how the story continues and just enjoy the story that is presented to you now.

That's part of problem tho - the way they have set up whole situation Tyria does not have time for "more story to resolve this issue". Considering announcements of AN on LS season 4 and 5, kralks needs to be dealt with in the very next episode, to fit story coherency into scope AN told us they will keep.

@Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Lord Trejgon.2809 said:We have solid plan (despite Canah whining it's crazy it is actually pretty solid) and everything seems to go - more or less - according to that plan.

So preparation time getting cut short from weeks to days is according to plan? I found it much more disturbing that Taimi was able to reverse engineer Dredge tech within seconds than any of the other things in the story. The plan wasn't solid, it was heavily improvised and the story made sure you know this, even if the it was intentionally upbeat.

Time was made up after the announcement of prep time being cut down if you didn't notice - whole idea with resonance crystals came up after it turned out that we won't have time to make enought dragonblood weaponry to arm whole army at our disposal. The only weak chain of that plan was reverse engineering resonance enhancers by taimi, but considering how dredge are fairly low-tech compared to asura, and considering previous achievements of our little asura there this does not get out of scope of story's continuity.

We lure kralk to fight on our ground on our terms, exploit his weakness to his own resonance frequency, after trapping it into typical anti-dragon trap (cathing his head into it and locking it there) and during the course of battle taimi confirms that reading from tracker confirms that it is working, and it worked until suddenly ED decided to not stay dead.

You don't make up weeks of preparation with everything done. Again, the plan in place was improvised to the best ability. Yes, the upbeat feeling and tone was intentional to make the twist hurt more. There is enough people who were caught off and by surprise going by the forum reactions.

But those "weeks of preparations" were meant for equipping a large scale army for a head on assault. since we didn't have time for that we came up with plan requiring less resources.

And yes everyone would be surprised when they defeat big boss in battle only to be told they lost that battle in following cutscene. but that doesn't make it good writing really.

@Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Lord Trejgon.2809 said:After third crystal Kralk decides to do shiny nice combo attack used energies he absorbed from other dragons/gods (very nice touch there) which aurene repels seemingly without much effort - and that's somewhat important thing for later.

Aurene does not repel Kralkatoriks attack. Braham does and Aurene enhances his shield, replay the episode.

braham sets up his own shield, beforehand but it's aurene who intercepts it with flash of aurene-brand - braham collapses just after that mumbling something about he totally could do it

He says: told you I could.

That literally indicates that it was HIS shield which protected us (obviously enhanced by Aurene). Again you were not paying attention closely.

That literaly indicates braham believes his shield had protected whole group, but he also mumbled it and collapsed just after so sorry, my first reaction to that was "yeah sure braham, whatever" (also considering earlier presentations of brahams power level he would not have even fracture of strenght needed to sustain that shield against even normal kralk's breath, not to mention the shiny overcharged one - it was Aurene who gave factual protection there).

@Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:Also the attack was not a point blank in Kralkatoriks face, as the later one.

and the later one was not even comparable in it's scope to the previous one. ("combo-attack" was big chargeup ult like attack, the one that overpowered aurene was basic breath that kralk spammed at every ocasion he could get)

Again, point-blank, in a death struggle very likely not conserving any stength any longer. There are a ton of reasonable explanation why a focused blast at the end would be more powerful.

considering the fact that just a second earlier he didn't even have strenght to shine as he usually does even to the point of being distinguishable from dead rock, I'd say he shouldn't even have much of that strenght left at that point anyway. also that argument works both way - the big attack was after we have blown third crystal into his face, "now we surely got his attention" braham even pointed out. To put it on the scale of previous ED encounters - it's like zhaitan was hit not once but 3 times by M.E.G.A. laser (he only got hit once by it in that fight btw), and you insisted he would be trying to conserve any strenght when summoning up bit "now I'm agry" attack against the pact fleet?

also that final blast didn't brand whole room as opposed to the combo'ed one.

@Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:My feeling is you simply do not like the path the story took. Which is fine. Some of your points were off and/or unfair I think. You've also been inattentive in some of the things going on both during the Balthazar story arc as well as this one.

it is not just about path the story took but delivery of that - sure people say they felt gut punched on aurene death, but I personally felt cheated out of a well deserved win. Aside from 2 years build-up of how aurene is our only hope, if they wanted that loose, the trap plan should collapse earlier for it to feel believable to my standards.

A well deserved win? How many living world episodes did you spend on fighting Kralkarotik? 2? The dragon who literally consumed a huge amount of power from Balthazar AND went rampant for ages in the desert accumulating power AND gorged itsself in other dimensions before this fight. You feel cheated because a improvised rush rush plan did not lead to success? Okay.

excuse me - prior to that dragon consuming chunk of balthys energy (on my side was other dragon who also had it's share in that energy mind you) kralk got nearly mortaly wounded by aforementioned balthazar already. It took him half of this LS season to recover from that. Ontop of that we are told in this episode that glint's armies managed to "greatly wound the dragon" which was why he have sat on domain of the lost in the first place (to accelerate recovering from that).

ONTOP OF THAT - it's not that "improvised rush rush plan did not lead to success", because the plan DID work - you DO receive during the fight confirmation from tracker device that it is working (even with confirmation that next one should do it)

AND THEN after whole fight, when kralk is beaten to a point where he literaly looks like barren, lifeless rock, he just wakes up, bitchslap aurene (whom was in much better condition at that time) and fly away like nothing happened. Again if they wanted to deliver failure of that "rush rush improvised plan" in a good way it should collapse way before that - so you actually see how it falls apart in combat instead of winning the fight only for a cutscene to tell you otherwise.

(and then again for all intents and purposes from tactically-strategical scope, considering in-game evidence it was very solid plan after all, and the only real "weakpoint" of the plan was not even hinted to be an issue during the course of execution - that weakpoint being - if resonance amplification is strong enought)

@Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:What would have been your preferred scenario? Kalk dies pre season finale, we check off this dragon, Aurene powers up to be ready for the next dragon and we simply move on? Seems even cheesier than the current state and way more boring.

My prefered scenario would probably involve couple of changes prior to this episode probably, but given set-up of the trailer alone I would expect this episode focused solely on preparations to confront kralk and finale being one huge epic scale bossfight. but no, they just had to force the fight early because "oh noes kralk is eating domain of the lost" and get themselves into that trap.

They did not have to force the fight early. Obviously the final fight with Kralkatorik was not today. I guess the writers figured it is way more interesting to spice things up with the first living episode in 2019 by throwing in a wrench, instead of just making a boring "we are amassing our forces" filler episode.

Except they did force fight early - they happily announced that glint's army is contesting kralk in the mists no more, gave window of opportunity ("managed to wound it but it's healing from feeding in the domain of lost") prectically forcing characters to put everything at stake to try to finish it now. And then again - "spicing up things by throwing a wrench" would work if they didn't have set tyria on clock back in ep4. because at the end of ep5 we have nothing left - no aurene, no means of making more of dragonblood weaponry, and no time to come up with alternatives, without pulling major plotholes.

@Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

EDIT: also remember, much of the speculation about Aurene reviving etc is based on conversations which only the player character, only part of the main characters or none were present (like Glint talking to Aurene this episode).

yes I mentioned it as once of alternative where story can go from now (specified it as jokofying aurene), but that only enforce that current "death" of aurene as drama insertion for the sole sake of drama insertion. If they really needed that death to be there for story reasons (after slightly bit more time of thinking I have got few ideas on how that could be intended to be resolved assuming she dies here) but then again - the delivery of death itself feels forced just for teh sake of having it there - you win the big bossfight only for that boss to suddenly reawake and roflstomp you anyway.

Of corse it is drama insertion. How boring would be a strait line of: new elder dragon -> amass allies and forces -> kill elder dragon -> new elder dragon -> rinse and repeat. That's the most boring story path there could be.

problem isn;t that it's drama insertion but that it's badly executed drama insertion.

which would by the way not be half an issue even if they didn't throw "dragon will consume reality itself unless we stop him fast enought" into ep4. This is what I mean with them writing themselves into corner.

EDIT: just to be clear, you have every right to feel disappointed or dislike the story. That is a purely subjective feeling and not everyone will like the choices made, that's impossible. It's just that I think some of the points you brought up can be viewed or interpreted differently. Here is hoping you will take a liking to the story further down the road.

I'd love so but I'm afraid not possible within scope of kralkatorrik's conflict. Because I don't really see satisfactory continuation of that arc at this point.

@Biff.5312 said:How about Joko comes back, and he and Kralk mutually destroy one-another, so Joko's legacy will be redeemed as savior to Tyria.

Or whatever. I don't care about the story.

Thanks, now I know which variant of plot for ep6 is worse :P

@Omernon.9762 said:

@Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

@Omernon.9762 said:I don’t know if it was mentioned here before (didn’t read all the posts), but it all goes according to the plan. There is a reason why prophecy stated that Lich has to be killed before Kralk. Dragons consume magic. Aurene got some powers from Balthazar and recently she consumed all of Joko’s power and he specialty was immortality... I would be surprised if she didn’t make a come back in the next episode. Her death was meant to be kitten moment for players, but just like in a good movie - there will be a nice plot twist soon and it will make sense, because everything points towards this resolution.

Except it was delivered in such a way that if that's the case then she literaly died "because plot demanded so". If that's what AN was aiming for then I'd say the overal battle plan should collapse earlier leading to aurene sacrificing herself to protect the rest (or something along the lines)

What we've got was win-that-suddenly-wasn't-win and another dirty use of "it-seems-dead-but-it's-not" (former one being joko)

Yea, all of it is true. But if you start watching American movies (Hollywood, Netflix etc.) then you’ll quickly get used to rather foreseeable storylines and lack of internal logic. It’s like a hamburger from McDonald’s - it has a nice taste, one that most consumers enjoy and know very well, but in reality it is nothing special. After some time you’ll just get used to it and you’ll stop complaining.

Same thing with this storyline - it just screams Hollywood at you. It’s obvious, it’s based on very popular among writers plot twists, but it is also something people like to see, even if it is really obvious how this one will unfold.

Problem with this attitude is that AN used to be actually way better than that......

@"sorudo.9054" said:i dunno why ppl complain about this particular episode, of all the episodes this game has this one has by far the best story telling.it makes you expect a success, makes you expect everything goes as planned, makes you think that you're completely prepared for whatever comes.and then it hits you right where you least expect, both aurene and the whole dragon aspect merge made the story something interesting.i expected to totally win, even if aurene was absorbed by the last blast i expected to kill krak.

no really, if you think this episode is bad then i have bad news for you, everything before this episode is tons worse.

Plot twist for teh sake of plot twist is shitty plot twist.

When you come to an MMO get a bossfight win that bossfight and immediatelly after that won bossfight get a cutscene telling you, that you've actually lost that bossfight, would you call that good writing?

I will now in simple words tell you why (at least I) am complaining about this episode - because quality of story delivery suffered greatly just for the sake of pulling the plot twist you enjoy so much, and because of how that "plot twist" played out it will most likely drop even further because one thing is sure - AN won't make kralkatorrik consume "fabric of reality itself" so we have to nullify that threat "fast" (following declarations form ep4). And with ep5 resetting our progression to pre-HOT level while not doing anything setting back kralkatorrik really, means that it is not possible to deal with it "fast" without further shenanigans.

Now you are entitled to your opinion that everything preceeding this episode was worse than that episode but I would not agree with that in the slightest.(and yeah that comes from the dude who was actually defending consistency of the plotline in season 3...... so go figure)

[perilisk.1874]

@"Lord Trejgon.2809" said:That's part of problem tho - the way they have set up whole situation Tyria does not have time for "more story to resolve this issue". Considering announcements of AN on LS season 4 and 5, kralks needs to be dealt with in the very next episode, to fit story coherency into scope AN told us they will keep.

Assuming it's a 6-episode season, it makes more sense to kill the big bad in Ep6 than Ep5. If they were heading straight into an expansion, maybe it would be different.

I dunno. I get that people are reeling (isn't that good?), but it's pretty common storytelling structure for things to get really bleak and desperate before the final act, to properly set the tone and the stakes. It remains to be seen how they handle Ep6, but they're on track to actually nail the proper structure and pacing of a plot for once.

I'm more concerned about their ability to make videogames with decent replayability and engaging mechanics. Movies, I can watch on TV.

[perilisk.1874]

@Lord Trejgon.2809 said:When you come to an MMO get a bossfight win that bossfight and immediatelly after that won bossfight get a cutscene telling you, that you've actually lost that bossfight, would you call that good writing?

Ask Thor about how that feels.