Guild Wars 2: Path of Fire (Coming Soon)
Friday? That's just weird. Game releases are supposed to be on Tuesdays, everyone knows that. Heh. Well, fine. So, the new GW2 expansion is out Friday and... I guess that's fine. I'll be the first to point out I haven't really been digging into the meat of what's coming. I haven't tried any of the beta/preview stuff. I've only really looked briefly at the one new spec that applies to my main character. The talk of mounts makes me think "about time" rather than "awesome" (and I'm not really fond of the idea of having to do mastery tracks for them). The only new guild thing I've heard of is a new hall (which current guilds will already have one of) rather than any new missions to run.
Overall... I think I've not been this unexcited about an expansion since... WoW: Warlords of Draenor.
It probably doesn't help that the recent Living Story content has fallen a bit flat with me with too many abrupt changes of direction. Season 3 seemed to take multiple threads and not really do justice to any of them in my perception (Living Story Spoilers):
- The White Mantle came out as a sudden threat against Kryta. Oh, they had historic basis, but their manifestation in the GW2 era seemed sudden. Then they flame out pretty quickly, really serving only to bring back "Lazarus" and kill off a favorite character of mine.
- Woven into that we get some further examination of the Dragons. That seems like it should have been a main story or expansion of its own. Zhaitan was the main game's end boss. Mordremoth was the entire point behind Heart of Thorns. Here we get a couple episodes split up between two of the other Dragons and the realization that killing them is unbalancing magic in the world and potentially a worse thing than letting them throw their weight around. This feels like it could have/should have been an even bigger thing, especially when the player and the band of NPC heroes they've been running with since the end of the new story is being stylized as "Dragon's Watch."
- Instead, things move back to "Lazarus" and the reveal that he's actually Balthazar. That, again, feels a bit out of left field and begs the question of why the deception in the first place. The only answer sort of given is to be able to use the White Mantle as an immediate cult of sorts, but... he dumps them so fast in favor of a mercenary army and it seems like, as one of the six human gods, he could have had his own following as himself anyway. That makes zero sense to me. But he's set up as the next major antagonist.
- Then the story detours back to... summoning and killing the real Lazarus? Uhh... why? Fanboyish callback? Just to reveal Livia? That's the end of Season 3 and I can't help but feel like we've been given this kind of random non-event as presented as a climactic confrontation. It's unearned. And this from someone who did play through Guild Wars (1).
And from there, we head in to a new expansion with a new focus on a new enemy. I'm okay with there being other big bads beyond the Dragons, I just feel like it's a radical shift after the main game, first expansion, and several Living Story chunks all focused on them. I do genuinely have questions I want to see answered and hope are addressed - so there's some motivation to search for such things. But I'm a long way from psyched up for Path of Fire.
Overall... I think I've not been this unexcited about an expansion since... WoW: Warlords of Draenor.
It probably doesn't help that the recent Living Story content has fallen a bit flat with me with too many abrupt changes of direction. Season 3 seemed to take multiple threads and not really do justice to any of them in my perception (Living Story Spoilers):
- The White Mantle came out as a sudden threat against Kryta. Oh, they had historic basis, but their manifestation in the GW2 era seemed sudden. Then they flame out pretty quickly, really serving only to bring back "Lazarus" and kill off a favorite character of mine.
- Woven into that we get some further examination of the Dragons. That seems like it should have been a main story or expansion of its own. Zhaitan was the main game's end boss. Mordremoth was the entire point behind Heart of Thorns. Here we get a couple episodes split up between two of the other Dragons and the realization that killing them is unbalancing magic in the world and potentially a worse thing than letting them throw their weight around. This feels like it could have/should have been an even bigger thing, especially when the player and the band of NPC heroes they've been running with since the end of the new story is being stylized as "Dragon's Watch."
- Instead, things move back to "Lazarus" and the reveal that he's actually Balthazar. That, again, feels a bit out of left field and begs the question of why the deception in the first place. The only answer sort of given is to be able to use the White Mantle as an immediate cult of sorts, but... he dumps them so fast in favor of a mercenary army and it seems like, as one of the six human gods, he could have had his own following as himself anyway. That makes zero sense to me. But he's set up as the next major antagonist.
- Then the story detours back to... summoning and killing the real Lazarus? Uhh... why? Fanboyish callback? Just to reveal Livia? That's the end of Season 3 and I can't help but feel like we've been given this kind of random non-event as presented as a climactic confrontation. It's unearned. And this from someone who did play through Guild Wars (1).
And from there, we head in to a new expansion with a new focus on a new enemy. I'm okay with there being other big bads beyond the Dragons, I just feel like it's a radical shift after the main game, first expansion, and several Living Story chunks all focused on them. I do genuinely have questions I want to see answered and hope are addressed - so there's some motivation to search for such things. But I'm a long way from psyched up for Path of Fire.
If it had been Balth behind awakening the dragons and making them bloat and be awful, that could have been a reasonable tie-in. This sounds more Warcraft-y of "Well, the PCs beat Illidan. Who's next? arthas? K. After that? Uhhh.. Deathwing?"
ReplyDeletePotentially. Instead, it seems the Dragons are cyclical. Magic waxes and wanes, with the Dragons being major nexi/focal points of it, and they get active when there's enough magic in the system. And destroying one of them punts all that energy back into the system, boosting the other dragons and unbalancing things.
DeleteBalth's only involvement seems to be wanting to steal all that magical energy for himself, even if it destroys Tyria. So... now we get to deal with a pissy "god" and shelve what to do about the big bad Dragons, in a sense.