Do we really need this section?

[Tazer.2157]

I am sorry, but why would we need to "discuss" anything if the lore in the game is inconsistent and when any explanation can be conjured up to solve a problem? Lore about Bram's bow? Lore about Aurene being concerned about stepping in? All thrown into the garbage and burned up. What happened at the end of ICB is such a shame because the instance is actually pretty fun to play with a group. Please please please put more effort into the dialogue and the story. I cannot even think how lines such as (I am paraphrasing here) "We (the ebon Vanguard) were enemies with the Charr, but we are friends now"  were approved! Lazy and shoddy writing is what killed the ICB. Not the DRMs.

 

 

[The Greyhawk.9107]

1 hour ago, Tazer.2157 said:

I am sorry, but why would we need to "discuss" anything if the lore in the game is inconsistent and when any explanation can be conjured up to solve a problem? Lore about Bram's bow? Lore about Aurene being concerned about stepping in? All thrown into the garbage and burned up. What happened at the end of ICB is such a shame because the instance is actually pretty fun to play with a group. Please please please put more effort into the dialogue and the story. I cannot even think how lines such as (I am paraphrasing here) "We (the ebon Vanguard) were enemies with the Charr, but we are friends now"  were approved! Lazy and shoddy writing is what killed the ICB. Not the DRMs.

 

 

Hard to argue against if this is truly the direction Arenanet is going.

[rrusse.7058]

What is it? Why can't the writing team seem to commit to some of these older story plot points and lore?

 

Just like the game design itself, Arenanet is just so eager to move onto the next thing. Dungeons, fractals, raids, bounties,  strike missions, DRMs. What's next?

 

They teased this story plot point of the fire and ice dragons fighting one another all the way back in LW3, then put a stop to that, we did Flashpoint revealing a ton of things and the idea of the world falling out of 'balance', but now we're good? The magic just...flowed away, somewhere else? How convenient.

 

How are we as players supposed to be commited if the people that write and make the dang thing can't seem to?

[Plagiarised.2865]

All of these things are about predictions. Your problem is dicussing lore = predictions. What is going to happen next, so you see what happened before as a puzzle piece to figure out the future. But, and I can not stress this enough is NOT the only way to discuss lore. 

 

I love going through the game and seeing the culture and lore around the place. For example, there is a norn in Hoelbrak, Mattul Krigheset that talks of using the Fang as a ballistae, piercing Jomag with their own weapon. You might see that as a prediction. "This is how its going to or should happen!" and then get dissapointed when its never brought up again. But it can be seen differently. This tells us about the culture of the norn, the ingenuity, that not all norn are so strict to the Prophecy. It gives us cultural lore. 

 

You can discuss themes, motifs, parrallels, metaphors. Analyse the past without caring about its place in the future.

 

Scott Benson, a game developer (not associated with ArenaNet), put it best: 

Quote

There's a modern (or at least louder in modern era) tendency in both fiction and the interpretation of fiction that every narrative be some sort of very specific kind of hyper-literal puzzle box that can be "solved" by wikis and lore and clues and that this is in fact the goal of fiction, to create such a thing, the raw materials for this after-the-fact puzzle solving.

 

All aspects of a work must be read hyper-literally so that they can all be made into puzzle pieces. Metaphors can't really exist except to further the puzzle-solving. All parts are gears, locks, or keys, essentially. I saw someone refer to this as wiki-culture, but that's already a term. It's a good one for this, though.

 

There are a lot of stories that follow these assumptions that I like, btw! Not like saying it's "lower". Just that it is often assumed to be the "correct" way to do or interpret narrative and that leads to very specific kinds of storytelling and story reading.

 

For example, we spent a lot of time on in-world fiction. Stories about constellations, fairytales, religious narratives. And I'd get emails asking if Mae was the descendant of an in-world fictional character. B/c what was the point of the in-world fiction otherwise? The fairytales have to have a literal fact basis that directly drives the literal facts in the primary plot. They need geneologies. Birthrights. Gear A needs to turn Gear Q. etc

 

And again, let me stress, there's nothing wrong with stories that do this kind of thing. I like a lot of them! But this mode of /analysis/ just doesn't lend itself to discussing themes, or metaphor, or subjectivity. And those are to me the most interesting parts of stories.

 

And it leads to seeing things that aren't written like that as incomplete or broken or full of "pointless" bits. It's like reading Watchmen and trying to figure out how Tales Of The Black Freighter literally fits into the literal history of not just the world, but the main cast. Like Ozymandius needs to be the great great grandson of the guy from Freighter, a thing that actually happened, or else it's just a vestigial pointless frustrating addition.

 

 

Edited May 1, 2021 by Plagiarised.2865

[Zola.6197]

The point seems to be there’s no point discussing lore — major points of lore — if the devs will simply hand-wave or discard it on a whim. Most of the theorizing and discussing I’ve participated in about the dragons throughout Champions is null and void. Really, it extends beyond that in scope as the season 3 revelations have been ditched without being addressed at all, so I don’t understand why we had to stop Balthazar from doing anything or prepare Aurene to ascend in Kralkatorrik’s place.

[Plagiarised.2865]

41 minutes ago, Zola.6197 said:

The point seems to be there’s no point discussing lore — major points of lore — if the devs will simply hand-wave or discard it on a whim. Most of the theorizing and discussing I’ve participated in about the dragons throughout Champions is null and void. Really, it extends beyond that in scope as the season 3 revelations have been ditched without being addressed at all, so I don’t understand why we had to stop Balthazar from doing anything or prepare Aurene to ascend in Kralkatorrik’s place.

I'm saying that even if we go with the premise that they will  "simply hand-wave or discard it on a whim", it is still only one way to discuss lore. They could decide that all the dragons were created by Kormir and Faren, and it STILL wouldn't nullify the want for a lore section. Because you can still discuss, analyse things like themes and motifs of past things regardless of what happens in the future. 

 

The whole point of this thread is to say "the lore is inconsistant and the future stuff would be predicated on past stuff, so theres no point for these lore forums", and my answer is "discussing lore does not have to be about connecting dots to future stuff". Whether you like the lore is irrelevent to my point.

[Zola.6197]

Have fun then lol.

[Plagiarised.2865]

Will do.

[rrusse.7058]

@Plagiarised.2865 makes valid points. Yes predictions are one way to discuss things. I personally wouldn't call predictions lore, they're just predictions but that is besides the point.

 

What @Tazer.2157 is getting at is that the "rules" and the plot points that the writing team has created do not seem to matter anymore. People are frustrated that the established lore just seems to be hand waved away simply becuse it is convenient. Not because people are predicting incorrectly.

[Teratus.2859]

Well lore and speculation tends to be a very very common subject matter discussed on these forums so having it's own section will probably help to reduce the thread clutter in the general section.

Hopefully the fallout from IBS won't end up being a death nail for the lore maniacs in Gw2.. I guess we'll have to wait and see on that one.. still a fresh wound.

[ugrakarma.9416]

IBS was good til Jormag Rising, in champions everything fall apart.

[PseudoNewb.5468]

39 minutes ago, ugrakarma.9416 said:

IBS was good til Jormag Rising, in champions everything fall apart.

Basically IBS was good until dragons got directly involved?

 

You know there are some people speculating/hoping the deep sea dragon is already dead. And if not already dead, maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea if the deep sea dragon is given the Vlast treatment in EoD. How would that narratively fit? Well I am not inclined to asked that question anymore anyways honestly.

Open EoD with a lengthy cutscene of the Deep Sea Dragon getting shredded. And I will smile with relief that at least I know what the goals are with the expansion. I can be unburdened with the expectation that I have to understand the lore of dragons to get deeper understanding out of what happens next.

[ugrakarma.9416]

8 minutes ago, PseudoNewb.5468 said:

Basically IBS was good until dragons got directly involved?

 

You know there are some people speculating/hoping the deep sea dragon is already dead. And if not already dead, maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea if the deep sea dragon is given the Vlast treatment in EoD. How would that narratively fit? Well I am not inclined to asked that question anymore anyways honestly.

Open EoD with a lengthy cutscene of the Deep Sea Dragon getting shredded. And I will smile with relief that at least I know what the goals are with the expansion. I can be unburdened with the expectation that I have to understand the lore of dragons to get deeper understanding out of what happens next.

 

In  "finale" Aurene is asked about remaining magic around shes just say "i dont know"..

 

to me is just a setup for "cheap route", yeah, is simplistic, without much mystery, aurene absorbed something, and the rest will make DSD rise, EoD is just this.

 

The real question is why rush so much the kill of the dragons? end the gw2? or prepare a terrain for Gods returning?(the only thing that can make lore interesting again).

 

 

Edited May 2, 2021 by ugrakarma.9416

[Zola.6197]

15 minutes ago, ugrakarma.9416 said:

The real question is why rush so much the kill of the dragons? end the gw2? or prepare a terrain for Gods returning?(the only thing that can make lore interesting again).

Seeing as how Balthazar returned as the one-note God of War trope we've seen time and again in fantasy properties, I don't think bringing back the gods will inherently make the lore "interesting" again, personally. I'm more concerned we'll see interesting lore figures like the six butchered of depth and underwritten.

 

Edit: And frankly, I was more interested in discovering more lore and depth behind the Spirits of the Wild, and the Icebrood Saga hardly scratched the surface in that regard.

Edited May 2, 2021 by Zola.6197

[ugrakarma.9416]

12 minutes ago, Zola.6197 said:

Seeing as how Balthazar returned as the one-note God of War trope we've seen time and again in fantasy properties, I don't think bringing back the gods will inherently make the lore "interesting" again, personally. I'm more concerned we'll see interesting lore figures like the six butchered of depth and underwritten.

 

Edit: And frankly, I was more interested in discovering more lore and depth behind the Spirits of the Wild, and the Icebrood Saga hardly scratched the surface in that regard.

Unfortunately aside of raven stuff in bjora, the spirits where reduced to "cool friendly spirit pets".

In really theres no "very interesting thing" can survive rushed content.

 

the main reason i call for gods lore, is because most of gw2 mysteries are tied to them.

Edited May 2, 2021 by ugrakarma.9416

[Gazrul.3086]

Of course we need this section. It is a great place for more enthusiast to discuss the story and potential developments of the future plot lines. Even though the current development has been somewhat underwhelming, I'm sure there are still plenty of interesting and rich storylines for us and I can't wait to see what they'll have to offer.

Edited April 21, 2022 by Kotarnus.6217

[SexyMofo.8923]

Of course we need it. We need a place to express how badly the devs and this company kittened up the lore.