u/soganomitora

I can't tell you how disheartening it is to get all excited for Alistair to use Maric's blade, just to find that it's weaker than the weapon he was already equipped with.

I'm not even rushing to get to the DLC or anything, it just lags behind.

Sorry if this is answered in the game, feel free to spoil me if so.

Jennah is the last queen to the Krytan throne, and a big deal is made over her hanging onto her position and not letting the ministry take charge.

However, Jennah must be roughly 40 by now, going by the game's timeline, and she's never married and has no children. Even if she suddenly got married tomorrow, she's pretty old to start having children, but she doesn't even seem to be planning on it at all. She and Logan never got together because of class differences, but she made no attempt to find a nobleman to marry either.

Is her lack of an heir not a concern to herself or anyone? What will happen to the throne when she dies? Will the monarchy dissolve and the ministers take power once and for all? Is she infertile? If so, why hasn't she taken any steps to adopt an heir from the nobility? Or is she just fine with the ministers doing whatever with Kryta once she's gone?

I know that the Order of Whispers apparently has a secret heir somewhere, but iirc she doesn't know that.

Queen Elizabeth I stayed unmarried and childless due to concerns over her power being taken from her by a prospective husband, but she also had living relatives lined up to take the throne when she died, and she wasn't the monarch of the last human kingdom. As far as she knows, once Jennah is gone, the throne is gone.

I realize that like most mmos, GW2 lives on a "floating timeline" so that they dont have to update character models as they age (or retire them). The passing of time is vague, exact dates and ages are never given, we get yearly holidays but we're not supposed to count them.

But then i read that it had been "years" since the commander had last seen Zojja in Secrets Of The Obscure, which means time is passing to some degree, and a significant amount. But i doubt it's 1-1 with the real world, or some of the characters would be looking pretty grey, lol. I know i definitely had less grey hair when the game released.

So i was wondering if anyone has any thoughts or theories about how much time has passed in-universe since we first wandered out of our home cities to fight Zhaitan, and how old the major characters are?

I realize that there's likely no true canon number, so just consider this a fun thought exercise.

Edit: So it seems there is in fact a canon number of years, it's been over a decade and I'm a dumbass, sorry lol. I never noticed that the journal exactly tracks time.

Though that means characters like the commander and Logan and Jennah are like. In their 40s? And that comes as a bit of a shock to me.

This is just a vent post about something I've noticed throughout the years.

In interviews with devs for other games, whenever the topic of romance in a game comes up, either because the game has or doesn't have romance options, Origins is almost always brought up as a comparison.

The devs might not directly name Origins, but you'll be able to tell that it's who they mean. They'll talk about how "other games" have a shallow romance where you can just give gifts until they like you, and how the way they write romance/friendship for this new game is *different*, it has depth, the characters develop their friendship or romance naturally. They'll speak very dismissively of the way Origins' romance plays out in order to hype up their own, and even the later Dragon Age games devs do this! I remember reading comments from Veilguard devs talking up how great and real the characters and romances felt in comparison to Origins, despite a lot of them never having played Origins before.

And honestly, the idea that the romances in Origins lack depth is horseshit, and makes me think that the people who criticize them often haven't ever played it. Yes, you can give gifts to the character until they like you, but you can also just, you know, skip gift giving entirely and build up your rapport slowly through your conversations and choices. And even if you choose to give gifts, all the romances have gifts that have great emotional and story importance, and add depth to the relationship. Hell, gifting Morrigan with Flemeth's Grimoire is arguably what leads to the plot of the next three games, lol.

While the pacing around the romances might be a bit janky in places, and the sex scenes are famously cringey, every romance has so much love and care put in, and it is every player's choice if they want to skip the fuss with the gift system, or let the narrative play out naturally. Origins' romances would not be so influential and foundational to the concept of romance options in games if they had been as shallow and uninteresting as other game devs like to make it out to be.

Hell, I still consider Alistair to be the best romance option I've ever encountered in a game, and even if i enjoy other romances, no one has ever been able to measure up. The way modern devs often jump to shit on Origins in this aspect is incredibly unfair, because if it was all shallow gift giving, I wouldn't be simping for the same pixel man almost 20 years later.

Also, other devs can hype up their own games as groundbreaking all they want, but when it comes down to it, they still pretty much all do the same thing as Origins. You select the dialogue, go on companion quests, make choices that align with their values, and if you build up the in-game metre enough you get the romance flag.

So according to the wiki it's mentioned somewhere that Alistair and Cailan met exactly once as children, but I can't find any details on this beyond that.

I was wondering if there's any details on their meeting in the books, codexes, etc? How long they met for, if it was just a passing in the hall or if they spent the day together? Did they play together? I assume it went well, or at least not bad, since they think highly of eachother as adults.

They have similar personalities, so I think in another life where they were raised together, they would have been close brothers, and it's a shame they were kept apart, even if the reasons were understandable.