It was Eparch's brother who was eaten by Modremoth. It also gives a plausible explanation for the reason the Sylvari and the humanoid Kryptis, like Peitha, look so alike. Mordremoth ate Eparch's brother. The form inspired his future creation, the Sylvari who were meant to be his minions before he created the Mordrem.

@JebroUnity

2 ай бұрын

Wait really? D:

A theory I saw on reddit that was fantastic and sadly wasn't in the actual story hypothesized that the unredacted fractal we see in the beginning of the expansion in a book is actually Nayos. And basically Isgarren was the sole responsible for Nayos and Eparch. It would've explained so much, and would tie in brilliantly with the beginning of the expac where we learn about the fractals. Sadly tho the mystery behind the unredacted fractals seems to be going no where.

I feel like the issue with their storytelling isn't even the scope - it's the way they make those fantastic beginnings of expansion and then fall flat at the end. Remember when season 2 ended with such huge trailer reveal for HoT and everyone got so excited at the end? Where's the excitement, the feel of unknown/hint for future? They absolutely can make short heartbreaking stories (Ai fractal or that one Wizard which we give locket to). This expac tried to give such big foundation for everything and we didn't get answers for half of them (What about Mabon?What happened to Sorrow? What is Peitha's backstory? ) . They say they want to learn from the experiences but from this last release it feels like a lot of team already moved to expansion 5 by the time this SOTO part released

@JebroUnity

2 ай бұрын

Def get what youre saying. Thing is they had a different set up with HOT being the first expac. Lots of set up and time tbh. I get what youre saying though for sure. The META though is pretty epic and fills a space which was very welcome. Cheers for the comment!

Thanks for uploading the podcast! :) Missed the stream but really appreciate your take on the latest story and the yearly expansion format in general after SotO

@JebroUnity

2 ай бұрын

Thanks for the comment and compliment matey!

The reason Frode bugged on The Fangs That Gnash is that the overlook where he stops at used to have an event on the chain. My guess is that Frode was waiting for a Clear Event signal that never came.

I think you guys made me realize a huge problrm i had with the story. And in summary is the difference between the story at launch and then the 3 post-release story. 100% agree the beginning is fantastic investigating the field, being thrown into demon portal and running for our lives etc. The whole launch story sets up the Kryptis as the bad guys, they really compliment the rift events and in a way makes the story simple and predictable. Demons bad, nothing new but also it's not bad at all. Peitha throughout sounds like someone we can't trust and expect a betrayal of some kind, from the start our alliance seems uneasy. Then 2nd part "story arc" happens where it turns out the Kryptis have their own realm based on dreams, and some wish to not be seen as evil spawns and are being devoured by their evil king. Like when the story finished what? are we gonna see some Kryptis wandering the baazzar during Fot4W? the only festival that has core race characters, frogs from HoT, and PoF visitors with their mounts AND think now turtle handlers and suppose humans and tengus can be seen as EoD. Not to mention it kinda breaks the immersion from the rifts a little bit, like they say those rift kryptis are loyalists....boy they sure have a lot and hope no good kryptis family pops out wanting to go sightseeing XD XD

@JebroUnity

2 ай бұрын

LOL sightseeing Kryptis xD you got me! Thanks for the comment ^^

First, definition. There are two kinds of politics: Explicit politics: that's the kind where it's stated explicitly and/or there's an unmissable message. Implicit politics: the motivation everyone has for doing anything. There's always an underlying political motivation or belief even people are unaware of it. How people are treated is implicit politics as well. Treat people nicely with an honest motivation, that shows a subconscious political belief that people are worth treating well. Treat them badly and that shows a political bias to treat them badly. Second, elaboration. Throughout the last part of "The Midnight King reusing Isgarren with his original personality I realised what was wrong with the story. It has no implicit politics. Eparch is evil for the sake of being evil and only in his death does ANet try to give some complexity that has never been hinted at before, which results in it just being weirdly interjected. All the characters in the second half of the story were 1-dimensional due to this lack of implicit politics. A good opposing example of this is Ryland in IBS, before Champions, you have the impression that he would have made up some other reasoning for asking for Jormag's favour even if his Warband had been alive as he due to Bangar's influence had already embraced a Fascistic ideology a long time ago. This is an example of explicit politics being used well, Joko was the same, there was an underlying layer of Fascistic ideology where violence was the method to sort all issues below his theatrics. This implicit politics is what makes characters multi-dimensional and the characters in the second half lacked this and thus felt kinda meh to me. My guess is that someone told the writers, because they had been listening to weird guys on the internet, to have no politics in the story at all. So, the writers wrote the story without any political message at all because this level of bad can only be achieved by deliberately removing politics or by someone who has no prior experience. Implicit politics is the heart of a story and to paraphrase Stan Lee, a story without a heart is a boring story. I doubt we'll see much change for the next major story release, I can hope that implicit politics are in the second half of it though.

@JebroUnity

2 ай бұрын

Hmm, no a fan of calling folx bad or inexperienced, but Ill leave that there.

I just wanna see Rook's Wife Tierlist. Also Kroof needs to start voicing Kryptis Skritts if that ever becomes a thing.

I just realized. No jumping puzzles in Nayos. I don't think there were any jumping puzzles in all of SoTO? Sad.

It sounds harsh but Soto has been such a massive narrative disappointment for me, I'd put it up there with Champions in terms of how so much initial momentum for an expansion could get bungled by the end. Champions at least goes out with a bang with Dragonstorm. Putting aside the absolutely horrid plot contrivance of instantly killing two elder dragons, it at least tried to make a big visual spectacle. The end of this expansion was...frankly a whimper. I did not feel much of any emotions besides "thank goodness it's over." I don't want to discredit the good work the devs put into it, but this content delivery system has not worked out for me and I've been feeling quite disengaged from the game. I play for the story and the events and exploration. Soto was frankly not for me it feels like. Maps being absolutely chock full of chain events and collections and achievements being tied to specific steps of these chains made it next to impossible for me to ever get anything done. There's not many secrets or cool things in the Soto maps since all the real estate is occupied for the metas and skyscale travel. Nayos while beautiful is unfortunately a stark reminder how simply how bungled the Kryptis are as a faction. What started off as strange, esoteric dream eating demons who did not understand emotions to then basically being people like everyone else took all the mystery and intrigue out of them. At the start of the expac when Peitha is experiencing our emotions and trying to understand it all, I felt so fascinated. But somehow by the end of the expansion we come to know that Kryptis feel all the emotions we do, which is a narrative incongruence that I can't work past. How do they suddenly not remember or know what our emotions are like if they have the same societies and habits and vices and natures as us? All in all, Soto has been a disappointment for me personally. The metas were too intense, with too much focus on skyscale combat (visual noise of so many wings and skins absolutely chugging my computer didn't help), the maps lacked flavour and fantasy which is wild for a floating island biome and a demon realm, the endgame aspirational stuff was 2 strikes and their CMs, legendary armour is such a slog and requires so much rifting that I can't do them fast or risk burning out entirely. And then I'm left here hoping that they take away critical learnings and can put it into practice for the next cycle. I don't think I can handle another Soto sadly.

@JebroUnity

2 ай бұрын

Thank you for commenting. I feel like I said in the pod, that this will just be a HUGE learning experience, and confident things will change significantly as things go forward. I keep remembering what Kroof said about a ten year story being wrapped up then changing to one over a year. I dont think they put themselves in the easiest position. Over two expacs, this wouldave been a different story imo!

@melancholism3553

2 ай бұрын

@@JebroUnity Yeah absolutely. I personally would hope for them to tone down the scope of the narrative if possible. Grand tales need not be told every single time in my opinion. A simple, focused, concise story works fantastically, and Anet's got the potential to do it. The whole Wing 4 story with Saul, while tied to the overall White Mantle storyline that ran through LWS3, was still a very intense, personal story told through a raid. Stuff like that is where they shine the most imo. Even EoD in the grand scheme of things was funnily enough small in scope. Our quest to rid the world of the Dragonvoid and spare Soo Won. It felt much more personal and more epic as a result.

I agree with Fornax but we DO have dedicated cutscene team - check out the credits! It's so stupid they are not utilized at all!

I wihs they could decide if they are going to keep insisting to include open world with story or not. Ever since Verdant Brink I've done map completion and meta before story. Then I got punished for this in SOTO where I have to go do events again. However, after shrugging and deciding to do story first as they seem to want I am again punished by not knowing that I should do the meta this time around.... PICK ONE!!!!!!

@JebroUnity

2 ай бұрын

Yea I understand the frustration for sure, but looking forward to finding out how they learn from this ^^. Thanks for the comment!

So I've convinced myself that ANET wanted to have a Peitha twist in the story but ran out of time. I can't find the exact instances but... a couple of times during the Nayos patches we were speaking with her and Ramses. Normal conversational stuff but Ramses spoke and almost instantly pulled up on what he was saying. Almost correcting himself as he was being too formal towards Peitha or somehow overstepping his boundaries. A tinge of genuine fear there as if there was an underlying motive behind Peitha getting the throne and Ramses was in on it. Maybe I mis-read the scene and this is all just in my head. No one else seems to have picked up on this to my knowledge but I did play through the instances twice and thought the same both times so...

@JebroUnity

2 ай бұрын

I def agree that there felt like it was going in another direction than it did. In the blog post they did speak on their scope being a bit too wide story and character wise. Thanks for the comment!

@Avenrise

2 ай бұрын

@@JebroUnity Maybe we'll get that payoff down the line, maybe ANET will just press ahead. Just glad they're not sweeping it under the rug this time around. Looking forward to Tuesday :)

I think the chronology of the meta and story is that you're intended to do the meta first. Eparch gets beaten there and then flees, that's where you then confront him in the story as he's been much weakened, still a massive threat though, and the story does a non-existent job of explaining that.

@JebroUnity

2 ай бұрын

Soooo I found that its: Ch 17, META, THEN, 18, 19. Yea there is not a single warning at all. We are hoping that gets patched in for sure!

Don't worry, when I watched people talk about how to fight Eparch and they mentioned to use the redacted of redacted I was like what are you talking about, I just fought him and won....then when i saw images and watched videos of said redacted of redacted i was like what the heck how did i miss that xD

@JebroUnity

2 ай бұрын

Well dont you worry.. a BUNCH of us missed it lol

Seems like it wouldn't be a difficult change to require players to participate in the map meta event at least once, before allowing the final story chapter to be available to play. Like a couple of the podcasters here, I completed all of the story chapters before doing the map meta event (actually, I still haven't done the map meta event yet), and it is a very disappointing feeling to have this expansion end with approx. 20 minutes of story play, and not see Eparch's form as shown in the meta event. How can the developers be so out of touch with the community players? Do any of the developers play this game? Like so many tens of thousands of players, I still love this game, but I'm becoming more frustrated with every new expansion and balance patch, and really having increasing doubts about what is going on with the management decisions at Arenanet. The narrative team is extremely frustrating, as they miss the mark so many times, after being given such rich lore and history to work with. I'll keep playing, and hoping that the experience will get better in future expansions and patch releases, but it is getting harder to maintain any hope that GW2 will improve further, and gain more players. It is such an excellent game and has so much potential, but Arenanet is failing in so many ways lately, and it makes it appear that GW2 is on a unrecoverable downward spiral, that cannot be reversed.

@JebroUnity

2 ай бұрын

Do devs play their game? Holy moly YEP! Ive played on stream with devs, as well as in the past in pvp and more recently. They LOVE their game. Remember that the lore they have to work with.. came from them :D This was a huge learning experience imo, and Im looking forward to the next expac! Cheers for the comment!

Do you think Eparch based on Trump ?

@JebroUnity

2 ай бұрын

LOL. I think Eparch probably has more to work on to be on the same level as Trump tbh xD

This is why i prefer a traditional expansion. Story wise, the expansions are far better than SOTO.

@JebroUnity

Ай бұрын

I LOVE the expansion story though of SOTO! It was probably one of my faves! It was just the next updates that felt like they had a solid base, but they didnt have enough time to fully realize it which is a great learning experience tbh! Thanks for commenting! OH and what was your favorite story in GW2 thus far?