Tunnel Visions: GW2

Reviewing each episode of Guild Wars 2's Living Story as it appears has always been something of a tradition here at Inventory Full but I was thinking it might be time to bring that tradition to an end. Who even plays GW2 any more, anyway? I barely play it. These days even posts about EverQuest II seem to draw more interest.

I was certainly feeling that way after I'd played through the first few sections of the new story drop a few days ago. The overwhelming feeling of sameness was stultifying. The latest chapter of The Icebrood Saga, Shadow In The Ice, takes place in the same map as the previous one. A hitherto unrevealed part of that map, sure, but it soon transpires that one end of Bjora Marshes looks much the same as the other.

In some ways that's a good thing; I said some very complimentary things about ArenaNet's art department in my original assessment of the marshes and standards haven't slipped. Even so, as impressively as the team evoke the overpowering desolation of eternal winter, some of the impact inevitably dissipates with familiarity.

Seen one set of fallen arches, seen 'em all.

As I plodded through the narrative (and yes, there will be spoilers) that sense of déjà vu grew until I was seized by an overwhelming ennui. We've not only been here before, we've been here many times. So many times...

A subset of the regular cast bicker and kvetch about personal issues while trudging across a wilderness in pursuit of a distant quarry. A disembodied voice, laden with distortion, maintains a fractured and fractious dialog with the player character, while in the background looms an existential threat in the form of yet another a dragon.

In principle I don't have a problem with repetition. I certainly don't have any issues with thematic focus. If the core of the game's story is dragons and their metaphysical relationship to the continued existence of the world and everything in it then I'm down with that. Or I could be.

Only does it have to be so pedestrian? So lacking in urgency? So quotidian?

Now that's what I call an interstitial!

We have reached the stage in the narrative where slaying elder dragons is just what our characters do. Dragons and gods. Even characters we meet for the first time now take it as a given. "Oh, I know who you are. You're that guy who kills dragons".

Any story that makes dragon-killing into a day job is in trouble, even if we do kill the odd god on the side, when the dragon-killing goes slack. Still, it is what it is. And I can't complain, or I shouldn't. I was one of those who advocated getting back to the main plot all through that long and tedious digression with Palawa Joko, after all. If dragons it must be then let's get to it.

Except, of course, we don't. We don't get to killing dragons because in Tyria dragonslaying is always and inevitably preceded by a plethora of busy-work. Busy-work and talking. Which we call "preparation".

For the new Saga-shaped iteration of the Living Story, ANet have done away with Hearts once again. We had them in the base game, then they went away for years, then they came back. Some people liked that, some didn't. The current version seems like an attempt to please, or at least not annoy, both factions.

Yeah, yeah, I heard it all before.

There are no Hearts as such in Bjora Marshes, old part or new, but the storyline uses beats that are functionally indistinguishable. Before we can pursue the renegade Charr leader, Bangar, or mount an attack on elder dragon Jormag's champion, Drakkar, first we have to go do this and that, here and there, all around the new map.

Instead of completing tasks to fill a Heart we have to participate in Dynamic Events. Or, as some would far more accurately be called, Static Events, given they take place in a fixed location and have a visible on-screen timer telling you when to expect them. Participating fills a green bar in the top corner of the screen. Green bar, yellow Heart. Same difference.

I won't go over the details of what the events are or how they work save to say that they're simple to complete and only mildly irritating. I was consumed with a palpable sensation of box-ticking as I knocked them off, one after another. High adventure it was not.

Once again, I feel it would be churlish to complain. After all, I made it quite clear I'd had more than enough of the more "challenging" requirements of previous Living Story seasons. This approach is unarguably much closer to what I said I wanted. Maybe I've just seen it too many times, now. It's been more than seven years. Familiarity takes its toll on enthusiasm.

Pretty much what you'll be looking at for the next thirty minutes.

With the outdoor prep done it's off to the instances we go; a series of tunnels and caverns that conspire to be unremarkable and visually appealing at one and the same time. ANet's artists are very good at ice but ice can only hold your attention for so long.

Progress through the ice tunnels goes as you might expect. The Commander (as the player character is known, by dint of a military appointment that can surely only be honorific at this stage, since the last thing we ever do is command anyone to do anything - or, if we do, to have them actually do it), accompanied by Rytlock, Ceria and Braham, push on past various icebrood minions towards this episode's Big Bad.

Pacing here is decent. Waves of low-quality grunts attempt to swarm the team and are summarily dispatched. Stronger cannon-fodder follows and meets a similar fate. Finally a Champion appears for a fight that lasts a minute or two.


Real story spoilers next - look away if you might play.


I did wonder for a second if that was it but no. This is an episode with multiple endings. It's also almost an homage to endings we have loved (or loathed) from episodes in the past.

When you can switch the UI off and stand in melee range to screenshot the sub-boss's big attack...

There's a dragon whispering in the ears of the weak - and indeed of the strong - threatening to turn friend into foe. And succeeding. There's a dragon's champion visible only as a disembodied head poking through a wall. There's a segment where The Commander has to fight and defeat a vision of themselves.

Seriously, it's like a Greatest Hits compilation, although it's a lot better than that sounds. It's like a cover album of the greatest hits of a band you never much liked but done by a bunch of bands you like a lot more. And best of all they all only do one verse and a chorus then it's on to the next number.

It motors right on through, in other words. None of the dismal rule-of-three that made previous seasons such a misery. Best of all, even though the baddies still paint the floor with every kind of circle and splodge, even though they spew balls of light and columns of ice and bolts of lightning and blue fire, none of it really does much.

The dark blue one that looks like a slug is Jormag's Whisper. The skeletal head sticking out of the wall is Drakkar. Dead Drakkar. We just killed him. We just killed him. Bangar did not kill Drakkar. Let's get that straight right now!

You can dodge it if you find dodging exciting. I did for a while. Then I stopped and just stood there and it made precious little difference. I barely ever went under three-quarters health.

Some people will surely complain that this is insulting to their great gameplaying skills but I find it entirely appropriate for solo storyline instances in a casual MMORPG. It took them a long time but ANet finally seem to have realized who their core audience is, for the narrative at least.

If that was all there was to Shadow In The Ice I might not have bothered writing it up at all. I might have let this be the breakpoint that ended the tradition. But then something happened, right at the end, and it surprised me. The story took a turn I didn't expect.

Why, you devious little...

In the last few minutes, most of which comprises in-game conversation between NPCs and some rather well handled uses of the game engine, two or three things happened that caught my attention and re-engaged me with the narrative.

After a sequence of fights and a plethora of false endings and minor set pieces, Jormag's champion Drakkar is down, Jormag's Whisper (don't ask) is at death's door and everything looks set to resolve itself satisfactorily. And then, out of nowhere, Bangar and Rytlock's son, Ryland Steelcatcher, appear. The very two renegades we were chasing across the marshes. And between them they kill the Whisper, nearly kill The Commander and leg it out of the caves to take full credit for everything the good guys (that's us) have done!

I definitely did not see that coming. Neither did I foresee the coda, where my character wakes up in a refurbished Hall of Monuments, now re-purposed as Aurene's Lair. At least, I think that's where it was. It certainly looked like it. Didn't see my stuff there but still...

I like what you've done with the place, Aurene.

To cap it all off, Aurene then posits the idea that Jormag, whose insidious draconic blandishments The Commander has been exhorting his colleagues to be firm of spirit and resist throughout, may actually have a point of view worth listening to. Can you ever trust a dragon? Even Aurene?

According to celebrated data miner that_shaman, as reported by MassivelyOP, we may be in for "six more episodes with a two-month gap between each, leading to a year’s worth of content" . If it's all of a kind with this latest chapter I guess things could be worse. Eight weeks between drops would be just close enough to maintain momentum; the gameplay, while scarcely riveting, is demonstrably more to my taste than in previous seasons and I am at least mildly curious to find out what happens next.

I'll give ANet a pass on this one. And I guess I'll keep on doing the episode reviews. For a while longer, anyway.

It's All Good: GW2

This morning was... surprising. I logged in after breakfast with no particular plan in mind. My mouse pointer dithered over the EverQuest II icon for a moment as I thought about doing the new panda quest, then moved on.

What I wanted to do was play WoW Classic but if I knew if I started before nine in the morning I might end up playing for twelve hours straight and I wouldn't want Tobold to worry. I considered getting a blog post out before playing anything but the ones I have in mind are likely to be epics and I wasn't quite ready for that level of effort.

As I often do at this point, I decided to run my Guild Wars 2 dailies while I let my thoughts settle. GW2 dailies are predictable and generally quick, plus I hate to miss out on that two gold per account per day.

I logged my primary account in and found the dailies were exceptionally easy. I'd finished all three in not much more than five minutes. Since I was on the account that had opened the new map I was raving about the other day, I thought I might as well go and have a wander around.

Four and a half hours later I logged out for a belated lunch, having completed the entirety of the Bound by Blood Prologue. It's too early for any kind of detailed review because spoilers but my capsule review is this:

Best "Living World" episode for as long as I can remember.

I really have almost nothing negative to say about it at all. Let's have some bullet points about why that is, without spoiling the extremely good plot.

• It's paced very well


• There are absolutely no horrible, tedious extended fights.


• At no time do you have to learn a set of fatuous new skills that replace your real ones.


• Nothing requires you to do a thing, then do it again, then do it a third time to be absolutely sure.


• The story is genuinely interesting, especially if you like the Charr race and their politics.


• Not only is it interesting but it's coherent and it makes sense!


• A couple of regular cast members make a long overdue reappearance.


• At no point (that I noticed) does anyone say anything wildly out of character.


• The voice acting is good to very good.


• The dialog is significantly better than it used to be (although it has generally been improving since the big shake up last year).


• There are a bunch of new characters, all of whom appear to have actual personalities.


• Every location is visually sumptuous. I know GW2's Art Dept. always knock it out of the park but this time that tired re-used assets feel is wholly absent.


• The new map doesn't just look good - it plays well. It doesn't have the stale "Only here for the Meta" feel of so many recent LS maps.


• There are two dozen Events and they vary widely in style and kind. You can easily complete the number necessary for the story by doing only the ones you like.

Other than the sudden leap in quality, perhaps the most surprising thing about Bound By Blood is that, despite being promoted as a "prologue" to the real first instalment of the "Icebrood Saga", it seems to have more content and take longer to play through than many recent Living World full episodes. I did take a lot of screenshots (over 60 this morning, most of which I can't use because of spoilers) and did a fair bit of exploring, but even so I'm absolutely certain Bound By Blood is at the very least no shorter than the average LS4 entry.

I'm aware that my enthusiasm is in part driven by the change of location and focus. I find Ascalon and The Shiverpeaks a clear order of magnitude more appealing than anywhere we've been sent since before Heart of Thorns four years ago. I also find the Charr the most interesting of all the races. Only the Asura come close and they are definitely in second place.

Bound By Blood (a very clever title, as it turns out) goes all in on Charr politics with a hefty side-order of Charr culture. I loved it. Rytlock, my favorite GW2 character, has a starring role and, as always, makes the most of it, but all the other Charr with speaking parts are memorable characters too.

For non-Charr fans, there's quite a lot of Braham, mostly in his comedy sidekick persona rather than his spoiled brat mode. He's arguably a little over-used but I enjoyed his routines. Gorrik has a smaller but also quite funny supporting role, with a key scene that had me genuinely worried for his safety - not to say survival. Fortunately the "kill a much-loved character" trope, over-use of which by previous writers has drawn a good deal of criticism in the past, stays in the locker this time. I guess that's a spoiler. Sorry!

By the time the prologue came to its unexpected conclusion I found myself very much on board with the new direction. For the first time since... well I can't remember exactly when, but it could conceivably be as far back as the death of Scarlet... I find myself actively looking forward to finding out what happens next.

My only worry is that Bound By Blood is so good compared to most LW episodes precisely because it's a "prologue". That the writers have deliberately slowed the pacing and concentrated on the lore and the characters rather than the set-piece boss fights (which I loathe) only as a beat before a return to relentless, mindless "action".

I'm going to choose to believe that's not the case. That lessons have finally been learned. That we at last have a writing team that knows how to write and developers who know how to fit the necessary action to the limited skills of what is probably the most casual playerbase in major MMORPGS.

How long we have to wait to find out very much remains to be seen. ANet are keeping their cards very close to their breastplates this time. No talk of bi-weekly updates like Season One or three month cadences like Season 4. This time we get a "saga", not chapters or episodes. That could be any format - or none.

I just hope when the next content drop arrives I can come back here and be as positive about it as have been today.

Fly, My Pretties! : GW2

Two years ago, red desert sand replaced white alpine snow as the backdrop for World vs World. There was no explanation for the (deeply unpopular) change, which appeared to have absolutely no connection, either thematic or lore, to the jungle-themed Heart of Thorns expansion of which it was nominally a part.

ArenaNet were very clearly aware of the discontinuity. Someone was either amused or uncomfortable enough about the whole thing to script a couple of conversations in which NPCs question each other about who built all the towers and where they might have gone. Naturally none of those NPCs comes up with any kind of explanation.

The Mists, the realm where the endless struggle over territory between worlds takes place, has always been something of a mystery. According to the wiki, they are "the oldest thing in existence, the proto-reality that exists between the worlds, constituting the fabric of time and space that connects the multiverse together."

The entry goes on to tell us that "The Mists resonate from the worlds around them, forming bits of their own reality - islands of existence that reflect the histories of their worlds." The Mists are a reality but not the reality, which is handy, because it means anything can happen there and no-one has to tell us why. Or how.

Rytlock Brimstone went to The Mists and came back changed. Changed into a new Class, The Revenant, one of HoT's key selling points. Far from explaining how that might have happened, the writers turned not explaining it into both a plot point and a meme - "Later, Cub".

At the time, the vast majority of WvW players were so incensed with the supposed unplayability of the new map that not even the few who acknowledged the game even had any lore cared to speculate on where that hated map might have originated. When anyone did comment on the provenance the general assumption seemed to be that the Desert Borderland was a rejected or surplus PvE map from the expansion that arrived at the same time.

That theory was given considerable credence by the design and structure of the map itself. It seemed to have been created with gliding, a signature feature of Heart of Thorns, very much in mind. The entire map is riven by cliffs and fissured with clefts. Rope bridges cross canyons, steps descend dizzyingly from blue skies to dark shadows. Anyone who has learned to glide in the vine-clogged Maguuma depths yearns to glide in the clear, free air here.

And now we can. In a move many had long requested but few probably believed would ever come, out of the blue Anet have enabled gliding in World vs World. The response from WvW veterans has been predictably curmudgeonly and the addition of gliding is only "a test for gliding in WvW. If we discover with this test that gliding is not appropriate for WvW, we will disable it". Enjoy it while you can.

I foresee unexpected consequences by the barrow-load. Gliding hasn't just been enabled for the Desert Borderland, for which it is eminently suited, but for the old Alpine Borderlands as well. I can immediately think of a whole raft of previously unreachable areas that could open up with just a short flight and if I can think of them you can bet our Commanders are already drawing up lists of spots to place siege where no-one can destroy it and our Mesmers are plotting their new, impregnable hidey-holes.

And that's only thinking of the borderline "fair use" problems that will need to be addressed by changes to code or structures. I'm sure there will be a slew of flat-out exploits for the spies and cheats and hackers to enjoy at our expense as well.

Still, I'm really looking forward to Tuesday, 8th August, the day my glider will unfurl in The Mists for the first time ever. My Elementalist will be riding her Magic Carpet into battle and with luck I might finally stop dying when I misjudge the drop as I jump off the cliff in a mad dash from Citadel to save North West Tower.

All of which is very well, but once again it begs the lore question. Why have our gliders started to work when they never did before? Why is it that they only work around structures we control? Who's behind all this?

Well, did you know that according to legend the only current access to The Mists comes courtesy of none other than... Balthazar? I didn't. According to the wiki "...the only known fixed means of entering the Mists is within Lion's Arch, which is said to contain a portal with a bluish hue made by Balthazar which fluctuates between different places of the Mists".

Balthazar, the very same rogue god - the God of War, let's not forget - currently filling the Main Villain slot in both the Living Story and the Path of Flame expansion. How intriguing that both gliding and Legendary Armor, another key feature of Heart of Thorns, should come to The Mists just as the God who gave us access to them strides to the fore.

And think about this: if it hadn't been for the intense player pushback that forced Anet into a U-turn, right now all the borderlands (save Eternal Battlegrounds) would feature a desert map that looks for all the world as though it fell, not from the Heart of Maguuma, but straight out of the forthcoming expansion.

It never made any kind of sense for the Desert Borderland map to have been a rejected design from the jungle-themed Heart of Thorns development cycle but it fits right in with everything we've seen from The Crystal Desert, where we're going in September. There's one screen shot that looks almost identical to Air Keep and Fire Keep could be Balthazar's Summer Palace.

Is it too much to imagine all this was planned out before the last expansion? That at least some of what looks from the outside to be fractured, reactive, pragmatic might in fact be considered, patient, imaginative? That somewhere in ANet Towers there remains at least a vestige of the rumored ten-year plan?

Pretty to think so.

Expansion Confirmed! : GW2

And there we have it. I was playing GW2 throughout and FA decided to hit HIlls with an Omega right as the first video began to roll so I may have missed some of the finer points. I made some notes about half an hour after Colin Johanson had left the stage. Couldn't do it any sooner because I had to help take Stonemist Castle so, again, I may have forgotten a bullet point or two. Never mind. I'm sure we'll be hearing it all again. And again. And again.

The whole thing started, a few minutes late with a seemingly interminable warm-up during which Jennifer Hale, who voices Queen Jennah, did a sterling job getting the audience all hyped up. She was quite hyper herself and I had to turn the sound off pretty quickly.

Eventually Jennifer introduced ArenaNet co-founder Mike O’Brien who announced that, yes, Heart of Thorns is indeed an expansion. He immediately queued up a video:

That got a great response. Then Mike got out his giant wet blanket.

He listed all the things we weren't going to get, like a level cap increase, new gear, any kind of meaningful progression or a release date. He placed enormous emphasis on how "challenging" the new maps would be and how group-focused the expansion is. Every time he invited the audience in the room to endorse a point he got a feeble and lackluster response. Shots of the room showed a lot of people sitting on their hands looking glum.

It seemed evident to me that, at least at PaxSouth, few shared his disdain for the established MMO systems GW2 supposedly eschews. They seemed to be wistfully imagining what it would be like if GW2 had them too. It felt as if a lot of the room would have liked to yell "Yes please!" every time Mike asked them whether they wanted something he'd just told them they weren't going to get.

Mike didn't hang around. He introduced Colin Johanson, who came on and made a pretty good fist of repairing the damage. He had some videos to show us too but more importantly he had lots of explanatory detail that focused on what we are going to get not what we aren't. Weirdly, the first thing I remember hearing him mention was hang gliders.

Here's the list of things I remember

• Hang gliders

• Large, three-level jungle maps (roots, ground, canopy)

• Mastery System

• Language System for the new NPC races in Maguuma.

• Precursors for Legendaries - available through the collection system.

• New Legendaries.

• New Class - Revenant. Rytlock is one. Channels abilities from famous GW1 NPCs.

• Sub-professions, for example Druid for Ranger

• Access to previously unusable weapons for existing classes via sub-classes e.g. Greatsword for Necro, Staff for Ranger.

• New WvW Map with structures that give buffs across all WvW maps.

• Greater incentives to hold and defend structures.

• Guild vs Guild  mode for sPvP

• New sPvP map

• Guild Halls

Of all those things the one that got by far the loudest, longest and most enthusiastic response was Guild Halls.

On balance it's more than I expected if less than I hoped for. No new race, too much focus on "end game" difficulty, no real housing but an interesting new progression that sounds like EQ2's AAs, a new class and some really gorgeous new maps to explore.

The language system sounds particularly intriguing and the changes to WvW are not only a lot more than I was expecting but sound as though they could move that part of the game in exactly the direction I'd like to see it go.

We'll be chewing this over for months so for now I'll leave it at that but my overall takeaway is relief: it certainly could have been a lot worse.

By Their Deeds Shall Ye Know Them : GW2

*** BEWARE SPOILERS ***

Living Story Episode 8 "The Point of No Return" dropped yesterday. In keeping with tradition I will begin by observing that, once again, it's short. It took me maybe a couple of hours and that was speaking to everyone, poking my nose into everything and making quite unnecessarily heavy weather of the final fight..

Short does not mean bad though. It may not have taken long to play through but I thought this was one of the best LS episodes so far. It had well-balanced and engaging gameplay throughout, there were some good exchanges of dialog here and there and the voice acting was solid. The atmosphere was palpable and also varied, from the spooky beginning through the urgency of the Silverwaste battles to the elegiac despair of the final sequences.

The format is very familiar. We begin with another visit to Durmand Priory and a further consultation with Ogden. There's another book hunt among the stacks and another ritual to complete during which some fighting ensues. Then it's back to the pact camp in The Silverwastes to consult with Logan and the rest of Destiny's Edge.

A number of forum posters and Redditers read a lot into the exchange between Eir and Braham before everything goes to code red as the mordrem attack. My irony meter is very finely calibrated, to the point where it tends to give false positives for Ironic Foreshadowing better than 50% of the time, and yet I took Eir's promise to go hunting with her son in the Shiverpeaks when it was all over at face value. I feel a bit of a mug now.

Once the camp has been secured a scurry through the skritt tunnels to the Far Shiverwastes sees us back at that sealed door in the cliff. Only this time we have the key in the form of a king-sized matchstick.

Behind the door lies a very dark tunnel leading to a very light cave. This sequence I found particularly impressive. The moving pool of light cast by the torch is convincing and atmospheric and the vista-like reveal of the glowing cave works very effectively to create the intended sense of awe.

Once the scenery has been duly admired it's time to find a spot to plant the last of Caithe's memory seeds. As we play the hot/cold game to find the right location we pass an interactive bush. Naturally I interacted and the information learned from doing so plays directly into the upcoming cut scene with Caithe, Wynne and Faolain. I found that a very effective use of the narrative tools available and it certainly helped me understand Wynn's urgent desire to have Caithe kill her before Faolain can get to work.

The cut scene confirms the suspicions many, myself included, have been nursing since even before the game began: the Sylvari are tainted. Now we know how and by whom. I'm more glad than ever that I didn't create my new elementalist as a walking plant. I played an Iksar in Everquest when Kunark launched. I know what it feels like to play a character that every NPC in the world would like to kill. It's a hard road.

The episode concludes with a boss fight: Mordremoth's lieutenant again from the fight that nearly killed The Pale Tree. Compared to just about all the previous LS boss fights this one is very straightforward although I managed to make it ten times harder by missing one simple mechanic. It was only after I'd died about six times that a quick visit to the forums told me what I should have noticed for myself - the nasty, invulnerable shadow critters that kept putting out the fires can be killed with a simple application of Divine Light.

With that figured out the rest of the fight passed without difficulty. Dead dragonnette. High fives all round. The end. Only it's not.

At this point we are treated, and I mean that quite literally, to not one but two cinematics. Both are absorbing, thrilling and disturbing. Also spectacular. There's a great deal going on but the main themes appear to be the failure of The Pact's aerial assault on Mordremoth and the complete destruction of the airship armada, the turning of the Sylvari to dragon minions and the death of all the members of Destiny's Edge except Rytlock. Oh, and we're getting an expansion and it's called Heart of Thorns.

It's a lot to take in. Luckily Vigil Warmaster Wylliam at Camp Resolve replays the video. Which is unsettling because he also gives the welcome new recruits speech all about preparing for the days ahead. In fact the whole of Camp Resolve seems to be locked in a timewarp, still hard at work building the airships we just watched crashing in flames. I'm no fan of phasing but this really is a hefty jolt for the old suspension of disbelief to soften.

Still, that's a minor cavil. Overall this was an excellent conclusion to Living Story 2. In addition to the advancement of the plot and the visual feast I felt the combat was much better balanced for the expected audience. For the most part we get to fight as our own characters, using our regular abilities on regular mobs, which is exactly how it should be. There are very few new mechanics to learn and those there are are very straightforward. The final boss fight is blessedly short with just two phases rather than the usual three to six.

There are still enough loose threads to darn a dozen socks of course. Caithe skips off with Glint's egg yet again. Mr E doesn't get a mention. Taimi doesn't even make an appearance. The two cinematics seem to contradict each other over what happens to Destiny's Edge (and if they are really all dead I will believe it only when we find their corpses while exploring the Maguuma jungle - and probably not even then).

Where we go from here will be very interesting to see. There seems to be some confusion over whether or not this is the final episode of Living Story 2. I would anticipate some kind of coda or epilogue in two weeks time, right after the Big Announcement on the 24th. Whether there's a third season of the Living Story is uncertain. I'd bet against it.

One thing at least does seem beyond question: ArenaNet have succeeded in getting our attention once again.

All Back To Marjory's : GW2

Over at Kill Ten Rats, Ravious has a nice rundown of GW2's second season story so far, which is good because that means I can just link to it here and say "What He Said". I would have been struggling to get my version done before we hit the next Episode and when that arrives no-one is going to give hoot #1 about Entanglement.

The running time of that video teaser for Episode 3: The Dragon's Reach lasts about as long as an Elementalist casting Meteor Shower and the impact hits about as hard. The forum has been on fire since it landed (Reddit, too, for all I know). Map chat buzzes and rings with speculation and, yes, delight. If you haven't seen it, it's worth forty-five seconds of your time.

It's always good to see Rytlock doing his thing, although from the chewing-out she's getting Rox may not agree, but even by his major predator standards that bit with the sword is going some.  "What the hell is he doing?" seems to be the most common response. Suffice it to say that, on the back of this little piece of movie-making alone, today I bought the Destiny's Edge novel just to have at least a glimmer of an idea.

Still, that's the future. In the past and the present we have some aftermath and some questions brewing. Like, is Scarlet really dead? My answer to that is she's as dead as any supervillain, namely she is until some writer decides he or she has a really neat idea on how and why she's not. That's genre writing, folks.

Then there's the whole "are we corrupted yet?" thing. Was that really the Eternal Alchemy and if so didn't you imagine it would be, oh, I dunno, more Werner Herzog, less Roger Dean?

Much more interesting is the whole Jory/Kas/Belinda thing. Here's how I read it: Marjory has serious issues with her family. She has made a number of ambivalent comments about her upbringing and she has gone out of her way to keep information about her bckground from Kas. Kas only meets Belinda by chance.

Maybe it's me. I do tend to see ironic foreshadowing pretty much everywhere...

Belinda's behavior on meeting Kas for the first time is emphatically over-enthusiastic, leading to numerous accusations from players that she sounds like a much younger girl than the character would suggest. This is put down to a poor line reading by the voice actor, even though, as a rule, recent GW2 voice acting and direction has been pretty good and even rather subtle.

Belinda's subsequent appearances show her to be a competent and responsible soldier, not a flighty, breathy ingenue. The voice acting is significantly less hysterical. Either the audio director had words or, my choice, the initial reaction to meeting Kas was actually played as over-reaction, over-compensation.

In each meeting Belinda goes out of her way to be excitedly, enthusiastically accepting of both Kas, herself, and Kas and Marjory's relationship. She want Marjory to know that she, at least, very possibly in strong contrast to other members of their family, has no prejudices either in regard to Kas's rank or to her and her sister's sexual orientation and/or lifestyle choices.

After Belinda's horrific and shocking death, (Oops! *Spoiler*) Marjory chooses to cut Kas out of the entire mourning/grieving/funeral process. The reasons and explanations she gives are unconvincing and Kas is indeed not convinced by them. Marjory insists and Kas, behaving empathically, allows herself to become convinced because it's clear that Jory needs her to go along with the fiction.

Marjory is hiding something. It has been rather deliciously suggested that Jory, being a necromancer, wants Kas out of the way so she can perform some revolting ritual that will bring her sister back to "life". Much though that would make for a fascinating sub-plot I don't think that's going to happen.

Then again, not without good reason.

My reading is that Marjory knows that, even at the best of times, introducing her aristocratic, same-sex lover to her family, and especially her mother was going to be a challenge. This is emphatically not the best of times. I actually can't read which of those factors is in play but there's certainly something there that's not right. I get the distinct feeling that Marjory knows that to arrive home with Kas for the first time, along with the news that Belinda is dead, compounded by the fact that the two lovers were there when she died and failed to save her, would pretty much put the tin lid on any happy ever afters.

I do hope it turns out to be an issue of orientation not class. The introduction of a same-sex couple in this storyline has been welcome and refreshing but so far there's been an almost wish-fulfillment element to the easy, complete and unfettered acceptance the lovers have received, in the game-world at least. Perhaps Tyria really is utterly without gender prejudice (which would be nicely affirmative, it's true) and Kas and Jory's relationship is, quite literally, unremarkable within the parameters of their written, cultural environment.

That would be positive in it's way but also a missed opportunity. It would be a lot more interesting, not to mention powerful, were they to confront and overcome at least some opposition to the choice they have proudly made.

All well and good. Best talk about it now, though. When Rytlock drives that blade into the Ascalonian flagstones no-one's going to be in much of a mood for gender politics or sociological theorizing.