Now that the year-long story arc that embodied Guild Wars 2 season one is finished, we caught up with the ArenaNet team as part of a retrospective on the event and a sneak peek at the future. We checked in with the Lore, Story and Art departments to find out more. Check it out!
Editor’s Note: Additional lore answers provided by Bobby Stein, lead writer
MMORPG: Some players aren't very happy with how Ellen Kiel handled not only the attack, but also the threat against Lion's Arch. Would Evon have handled things differently? If so, how?
Bobby Stein, lead writer: I would say the people who aren’t happy with how Ellen handled the attack, my gut tells me these are Evon Gnashblade supporters who are probably a little bit sore about how the election turned out. Ellen is somebody who traditionally does things by the book. So when she learned about the Lion’s Arch threat the first thing she wanted to do was appeal to the council and try and get the support that she felt was necessary to fend off the attack. As anybody who knows anything about politics, sometimes the political machine moves very slowly, if at all. Unfortunately there was nothing that could be done about stopping the attack, so really at that point it was about Ellen doing her best with the resources she had to make sure as many people as possible got out alive.
Obviously Evon wasn’t too happy about being made the equipment quartermaster after the initial attack. It was pretty clear that he would’ve been a lot happier if Ellen had been buried under a lot of rubble during the attack, but he wasn’t so lucky in that regard. Remember that here’s a business man, and when you think of a business man in Lion’s Arch it’s a business man in a rough part of town. He might be doing business unethically. The lines for fair trade for him are a little bit different than they would be for your average person. Would Evon have prevented the attack? I don’t think so. Would he have handled the aftermath and damage and getting people to safety and trying to fight back differently? Yeah. I don’t know if the city would be in any better shape because of it.
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MMORPG: The chaos in Lion's Arch certainly looked pretty bad from inside, but I'm wondering what it looked like to the Tengu, and what was going on in their minds seeing this event of pure destruction. Will we see them close themselves off more from the world, or will they finally play a larger role in Tyria?
Bobby Stein: If you take a look at it, before the attack there were some scattered tengu who were hanging out outside the wall. You could come talk to them but they weren’t altogether that chatty. They certainly aren’t the most talkative people; they’re a little bit wary of outsiders. The instant the attack is imminent, their first instinct is going to be self-preservation. They’re going to hole up, they’re going to go inside those walls, and they’re going to fight anything that comes near it. If you’re on a battle field and you see somebody running at your fortress, you’re not going to take any chances. The tengu doing that was basically the smartest thing you could do in a war situation. I don’t think they were doing it maliciously and directing it at heroic players who were trying to save the city. But how would you even know who was friend or foe when you’ve got fire and death right outside your door?
Will we see them close themselves off from the world? As things clear, you’ll see them maybe come out a little bit, but I think in the interest of their preservation, they’re going to be a little bit wary of anybody they encounter. From a lore standpoint, we still think they’re a really interesting and intriguing race and culture that we want to explore when the time is right.
