The wait is finally over—Guild Wars 2's sixth expansion, Visions of Eternity, has finally released. This expac comes with high expectations after the team at ArenaNet delayed its release by several months and overhauled the release format of new-model expansions to ensure its quality. To top it all off, we also received multiple blog posts from the team discussing the successes and failures of Janthir Wilds, implying the team learned the right lessons from that expansion—though the same was also said about the lessons Janthir Wilds should have learned from Secrets of the Obscure. Does VoE hold up to the hype and expectations?
This article will contain major spoilers for the new story, the new maps, the new metas, and various other aspects of the expansion, so be warned.
Story
First, a recap of everything that happens.
Visions of Eternity has the Commander and company sail to the distant, isolated island of Castora in pursuit of the Inquest. The shady Asuran organization—and the only major faction from GW2's launch to remain active at this point in the story—has colluded with Rata Sum's Arcane Council to sail a large fleet there in search of an unknown artifact of great power.
After a harrowing, multi-week journey across the Unending Ocean, we land on Castora's shores and discover the magically-charged landscape and its inhabitants—the castaways of Hullgarden, whom we quickly ally with, and the more malicious Freebooters. After getting acquainted with Shipwreck Strand, the Hullgardeners, and the new abilities of our Skimmer, we track the Inquest further inland and discover they've already set up shop and are conducting experiments on the local wildlife, modifying them into deadly cyborgs.
Our investigation has us tail two high-ranking inquest leaders, Kuda and Sebb. In our pursuit, we come face-to-face with one of the Ley-powered Seneschals that defend Castora, Kela the great crab, and are forced to fight her, allowing the Inquest to escape. We proceed further inland, navigating tensions between allied factions as we build footholds in Starlit Weald, and realize that everyone's favorite Seer companion, Isgarren, has disappeared without a trace. We also meet PTM, a friendly, malfunctioning Inquest golem who helps us gather information.
Further investigation of local Inquest activity brings us face-to-face with the mysterious leader of the Inquest as a whole, Director Vloxx, and with this meeting comes the first main plot twist of VoE: rather than a maniachal, scheming villain, Vloxx is a more complex character who deeply respects the Commander and wants to work with us. He's convinced that he must obtain incredible power to challenge Tyria's existing power structure and clear the way for great heroes like us to take on impending future threats—he's merely using the Inquest in pursuit of that goal, and he plans to destroy the entire organization in the process.
After our encounter with Vloxx, our allies are set even further into disarray. Some, namely Canach and Rytlock, think we should consider Vloxx's offer and how we might take advantage of the situation; others, namely Sayida, firmly believe we cannot trust him and must thwart his plans at all costs. As those tensions rise, we search for the absent Isgarren to learn what exactly Vloxx is after.
A long and arduous search eventually has us track Isgarren down near the Lost Basilica, an ancient Seer ruin. After raiding the ruins and facing down some of its magical defenses, we confront Isgarren about how cagey he's been. He reveals that he was banished from the Seers, and most of the defenses left here were specifically intended to keep him out. He knows what Vloxx is searching for—the legendary staff Ancora.
After yet another search to track down the staff's whereabouts together, we watch an echo of an argument between Isgarren and Sidony, the leader of the ancient Seers, and follow that echo to another ruin. Within we find Ancora, but we are ambushed by Vloxx, Sebb, and Kuda. After taking the staff, Vlox sics Sebb and his two modified raptors on us as he flees, trusting us to kill Sebb for him. We do so and free his raptors from his control, letting them go free. After the encounter, Vloxx insists he's still on our side, but we and our allies decide we at least need to take the staff from him.
Narrative & Themes
I found the new story to be incredibly promising, largely due to it having a very clear theme. VoE has something to say, and it's something that has real-world implications but is doubly relevant to Tyria's world. To be precise, VoE seems to be largely focusing on the concept of grey morality.
Vloxx and the Inquest are the perfect antagonists for displaying this theme. While the Inquest is definitely an evil organization, they—and much of the Asura as a whole—don't view themselves that way. We see through dialogue and notes that many of them were forced out of Rata Sum and flocked to the Inquest as their last resort, or that some members are relatively well-intentioned and only joined the Inquest because it was more efficient than working with the colleges. The institution as a whole is evil and contains numerous evil individual, but many of its members have their own reasons and are more morally grey than evil.
Vloxx, on the other hand, condemns the Inquest as a force of pure evil despite being its leader. He's only using the Inquest to pursue his own goals, ones he believes are righteous and necessary; the Inquest is a tool, a means to an end, and he intends to destroy it from the inside out in the process of reaching his goals. He seems entirely convinced that organizations and individuals like the Tyrian Alliance and Isgarren are corrupt obstacles that only serve to prevent real heroes, like the Commander, from saving the day. In what may be the second major theme of VoE, Vloxx seems convinced that only great individuals can make a difference, a stance that contrasts the entirety of GW2's narrative up to this point, where the day is almost always won through unity and cooperation.
Vloxx's moral ambiguity is a point of contention among the rest of the cast, but, as Rytlock and Canach both point out, everyone we brought along is just as morally ambiguous. We first met Canach during his brief stint as a terrorist, Sayida's a pirate captain who once tried to turn us in to Joko, Isgarren spent centuries allowing atrocities to pass him by as he focused the Astral Ward on external threats, and Rytlock... I mean, do I even need to get into everything wrong with life in the Charr Legions?
The allies we take with us to Castora aren't our only examples, either. The vast majority of the Commander's allies used to be bad and/or tried to kill us at some point. Gorrik & Blish were Inquest, Zafirah was a religious zealot who tried to murder us for daring to kill the God that was actively destroying the world, Ivan was an Aetherblade—the list goes on. Vloxx isn't actually that different from most of our allies, except in that, unlike everyone else we defeated and befriended, Vloxx has started his relationship with the Commander as the one in control rather than being immediately recruited or defeated. That, and he already knew of and respected us long before we actually met.
Vloxx has a good point, as well. Even if unity and cooperation have been necessary to completing each of the Commander's quests, we've still been the boots on the ground doing the brunt of the heavy lifting personally. There have also been more than a few times where meddling or politics from the major nations held us back from doing the right thing or making progress on the whole "saving the world" thing. The world might actually be better off if some of those blockades were removed. At the same time, his distrust of the established institutions of the world is clearly overblown. It's clear the Tyrian Alliance, for example, holds the Commander in high regard—ours is the only seat on the council held by an individual rather than an entire country or a major military organization.
This theme of moral ambiguity pervades all aspects of VoE. The opening sequence highlights how the Arcane Council, one of our major allies, is directly complicit with the Inquest plot. Our new allies, the Hullgardeners, are morally ambiguous as well, with many being ex-pirates and Westergard and Osborne both threatening us. Our new enemies, the Freebooters, are also morally ambiguous; there are plenty of friendly Freebooter NPCs who don't fight the Commander and even coexist peacefully with castaway NPCs. But the element of VoE that best highlights this theme, second only to Vloxx, is Isgarren.
Isgarren's morality is deeply complex. Despite being an incredibly powerful wizard and leading the Astral Ward, he has allowed various tragedies to unfold across Tyria with minimal to no interference; he did so because he was focused on external threats to Tyria, namely the Kryptis. He puts his wizards through a ritual that robs them of their memories, but he does so in order to grant them power. He allows many small sacrifices to be made, but only because he believes those sacrifices are necessary for the greater good.
Isgarren has made many mistakes and has questionable morals, but he is undeniably well-intentioned, and he always acts for the greater good, or at least what he believes to be the greater good. His worldview and methods stand at odds with the Commander's, a fact that is highlighted in one of the best scenes from SotO.
The Commander believes it is necessary to save everything, no matter how small a loss it may seem, and they're willing to personally step in to do so; they would save the farm. Isgarren, on the other hand, focuses on the big picture; he would allow the farm to be destroyed to focus his full attention on stopping the main threat. He is also shown to be distrustful of others; he believed for a very long time that the Ward needed to remain a secret to function, and in VoE he tries to recover Ancora himself without even informing the Commander and company, once again believing things would turn out better if he solved things himself. Vloxx also singles Isgarren out as one of the obstacles that must be removed for heroes like the Commander to keep the peace.
Despite all of his flaws and his controversial methodology, Isgarren has moments where his hard outer shell breaks to reveal deeper morals within. The reason Sidony exiles him is because he used a secret Seer ritual to save Waiting Sorrow's life. In JaWi, we also see that he harbors complex emotions regarding his assassination of Yagon, despite her being one of the single most vile and twisted individuals in the franchise. It is clear that he does value the lives and wellbeing of individuals, even if he doesn't often show it; he just puts the wellbeing of world at large first. To highlight the distinction between him and the Commander once again, one could argue that he wants to save the farm, but forces himself to face the dragon instead.
This section sort of devolved into an Isgarren character analysis, but in short, VoE is clearly setting up some interesting narrative themes with regards to moral ambiguity and where we draw the line between friend & foe and redeemable & irredeemable. I'm very interested to see how this aspect of the narrative develops.
Characters
I already discussed most of the cast briefly, and Vloxx & Isgarren quite extensively, but let's go over the rest of the gang as well. Our main companions for this expansion are Rytlock, Canach, Sayida, and Isgarren. A handful of minor characters, like Major Emund and Narcisse, also tag along and play roles primarily in the open world. What stands out to me about this cast is that Taimi and Gorrik aren't a part of it; you'd expect them to be guaranteed parts of the Inquest expansion, but they're nowhere to be seen, and the remoteness of Castora makes it unlikely that they'll be joining us later.
As mentioned above, our main cast are all great choices for reinforcing the core themes of this expansion's narrative. Sayida fits in great with the pirate theming, and it's nice to see Rytlock and Canach again, even if neither of them are very strongly tied to the aesthetics or plot beyond the whole 'moral ambiguity' throughline. The way Canach instantly ingratiated himself with the locals by establishing Pub Canach is very fun, but they haven't done anything else terribly interesting with him or Rytlock yet. Hopefully they'll get some stronger ties to the plot in the later acts.
Something that surprised me is how little relevance any of the new characters receive. I went in assuming Westergard would play a major role, especially given how her voice was used in the trailers, but she ended up barely playing a role at all. After she meets us and threatens to drown us in the bay, I don't think she even shows up again in the main story. Similarly, we only talk to Mayor Osborne once. The only new ally who seems to have a larger role to play is PTM, the malfunctioning Inquest golem.
PTM is interesting to me, as he's given a decent bit of focus, including appearing as part of the Secrets of the Weald meta, but his role in the story is one that could have been met without the need for a new character. The Commander could have just discovered all the info he gives us themself, or Vloxx could have personally told us some of it. We end up encountering Vloxx while searching for parts to repair PTM, but we easily could've had another reason for sneaking into the Inquest base as well. All this leads me to believe that PTM will have a larger role to play later in the story; it just isn't clear what exactly that role is yet.
Finally, let's talk about our villains. Setting Vloxx aside, the other main antagonists are two of the Inquest officers working directly under him, Sebb and Kuda. Sebb is delightfully evil, and his obsession with personally seeing to important matters gives him a layer of depth. His presence is felt throughout both the story and the open world, what with his cyborg creations roaming about and his indirect involvement in the Secrets of the Weald meta. His fight is neat, if not particularly flashy, and he meets a fitting end that does a great job of building Vloxx's character, particularly with the comment on how "his cruelty far outweighed his usefulness".
Kuda, on the other hand, has a lot of the typical "mad scientist" charm of most Asura characters, but we don't see a whole lot of her so far. Her spiteful rivalry with Sebb is entertaining, but there isn't much to say about her based just on the first batch of story. She'll most likely be our main adversary in the next batch in a similar role to what Sebb filled in this expansion. Her connections to past content—her dragon minion experiments back in LW4 and her father, Kudu—present several options for the writers to take her in an interesting direction, but we'll just have to wait and see.
Gameplay
I don't normally dedicate a section to the gameplay aspect of a new story release, for a few reasons. The story instances generally have a pretty consistent quality between them and aren't super remarkable individually, and if I tried to give my thoughts on every instance you'd be here all day. There is something introduced to the gameplay of this expac's story that warrants further discussion, however—the new story collections mechanic.
Story collections work similarly to typical achievement collections, tasking you with collecting certain items or completing certain tasks around the map. Until now, these collections have served as side content—something to look out for while exploring the map, or a reason to go back and explore it again after completing the story. If that description doesn't make it obvious, making them a mandatory step in the story is a... questionable choice.
I personally found myself very frustrated with the collections during my playthrough. I'm an avid achievement hunter, the exact type of player who tends to complete all of the collections in each expansion, but the key difference is that I choose to complete those collections while exploring the maps on my own time. Taking a mechanic that's always been exclusively used in optional side content and jamming it into the main story feels unnatural, and the three collections in this batch of story slow the pace of progression a lot. The first isn't too bad, but the others take a while to complete. I felt utterly exhausted when the third popped up—I just wanted to continue the story instead of running around the maps looking for random doodads again.
Part of what made that third collection particularly bad was that it was spread across both maps and took place very late in the story. By the time it popped up, I'd already fully explored both maps for the most part, meaning I was just retreading areas I'd already seen while I scoured the zones for random interactables. Some of the hints provided by the collections were... really not great, either. The story did introduce a new mechanic to hep you along with these collections, allowing you to speak to an NPC who'd show you a scout overview of the maps and which PoIs each item was closest to, but those weren't nearly as much help as they should've been. Using the NPC hints was a very long and annoying process, since they would slowly cycle through all the items one at a time, including those you'd already found. Furthermore, just pointing to the nearest PoI was very imprecise as an additional hint. It worked fine for most items, but for a few it was actively misleading due to the items not being near any PoIs. Some of the items in the third collection were hidden incredibly well, too—I'm convinced the average player might never find them without using a guide.
Overall, I feel the story collections were poorly implemented and distract too much from the actual meat of the story. They take far too long for things that feel like they ought to be optional content instead, and I can only see them being more frustrating for players who are less inclined to that sort of content than myself—which is most people.
Maps
Alright, now we can get into the meat of the expansion's content. VoE's launch brings us two new maps—Shipwreck Strand and Starlit Weald. I won't sugarcoat it; these maps are great. Both are pretty easy to navigate while still making good use of verticality, and they're absolutely beautiful and filled to the brim with events. Exploring them for the first time gave me a very similar feeling to exploring Lowland Shore back during JaWi's launch. Unlike JaWi, where the first map was a 10/10 but the second felt kind of empty and undercooked, both of VoE's maps are amazing. And unlike Lowland Shore, they both have content that actually gives me a reason to come back after finishing the zone's achievements.
My sole complaint with Lowland Shore as a zone is its lack of a big draw. It's a lovely place to spend time in, but I completed all of the achievements there within a few weeks of JaWi's launch, and since then the only reason I've really had to ever come back to it was to hop into a Convergence. I'm glad to see that neither of VoE's maps have this issue; the meta-events and mirrors give me plenty of reason to visit them frequently. Speaking of those...
Meta-events
VoE's launch brings us three new meta-events. The first, 'Hammerhart Rumble!', is located in Shipwreck Strand; the other two, 'Secrets of the Weald' and 'The Basilica Vaults', are in Starlit Weald. Let's review them in order.
Hammerhart is a very simple meta; similar to 'Of Mists and Monsters' in JaWi, it consists of just a world boss with no pre-events. Also like that meta, Hammerhart has players split between two different bosses, Jessica and Jimmy. The two bosses share a health pool, and players are given a positive or negative charge that correlates to one of them and prevents them from damaging the other. At certain intervals throughout the fight, your charge changes and you're forced to swap to the other boss. In the final phase, they come together in the same area and the charge mechanic is discarded.
Hammerhart is a fine meta, though I do think it has some missed potential, particularly when it comes to the charge mechanic. In my opinion, the mechanic was utilized in the least interesting possible way. The event is quite hand-holdy, with a big splash text telling you exactly how it works and where to go. That would be fine on its own—the average open-world player definitely needs that level of direction—but in addition, the charge only ever changes at a few predetermined parts of the fight, and all players always swap charge at the same time. What could have been an interesting mechanic forcing you to pay attention and swap between the bosses as your charge changes instead just kinda corrals you back and forth between them.
I was especially disappointed by how the charge mechanic completely disappears in the final phase. The more hand-holdy beginning could function well as a sort of "tutorial" for the mechanic to then start actually working as described above in the end, forcing players to really pay attention while also dealing with both bosses' attacks; instead, it's completely absent. It is nice that you can cleave both bosses, but I feel a deeper focus on the charge mechanic would have made for a much more interesting encounter. Nonetheless, it's still a fine world boss.
I was originally going to comment on the poor implementation of the achievements related to this meta, but ANet completely fixed all of the issues I had with them long before I managed to get this out. Good job, ANet!
Secrets of the Weald is really, really good. The first time I played it, I genuinely expected it to end after the drills; instead, I was treated to one of the best world bosses in the game. Gwyllian is an absolute treat to fight with a great mix of fun, unique, and interesting mechanics. It feels almost like a 50-man raid boss in the best way. I honestly don't have much else to say about it. The drill phase is perhaps a bit long and has maybe a few too many chaotic CC effects near the end, but I've no complaints at all about Gwyllian.
Well, okay, I do have one complaint, but it's a pedantic one. Early on, there was an issue with the illusion phases where players would kill the Gwyldell before they could be CC'd, preventing progress; this was patched out, thankfully, but I find it incredibly odd that they were designed in such a way that made that possible to begin with. There is another event in Starlit Weald that uses a very similar mechanic; in that event, you must kill the Gwyldell first in order to reveal it as the real one and make its CC bar appear. Rytlock even has dialogue referencing this event. It confounds me that they chose to make the illusions in the meta work differently.
Finally, our trio of new metas is rounded out with the events in the Lost Basilica. This chain has you accompany Isgarren throughout some seer ruins, defeating its defenders and working your way through traps. It's a much simpler event than the others, to the degree that some may not consider it a meta, but I don't think that's a bad thing. It reminds me a lot of the dynamic meta-events in Core Tyria—just with the polish expected of modern content. It isn't anything too impressive, but it's a fun time with some great Indiana Jones vibes.
Overall, I think the team did a pretty great job with VoE's meta-events; I can only hope they maintain the same quality going forward. It was a great choice to ensure both maps have metas this time around, though there is sadly one mistake repeated from JaWi. Similar to Of Mists and Monsters, Hammerhart and Secrets both award Hero's Choice Chests that don't contain the standard amalgamated gemstone as an option, instead only allowing you to get a weapon skin or a handful of map currency. Just like Of Mists and Monsters, this give both metas an incredibly low gold value relative to most others. I can only hope they receive improved rewards later on, but given Of Mists and Monsters never received such an improvement, my hopes aren't high...
Magic Mirrors
The magic mirrors that dot Castora are an amazing addition from a design standpoint, and I appreciate them a lot. If you aren't aware, magic mirrors can be found in set locations across Castora once you train a certain mastery. Interacting with them lets you play a little target-shooting minigame before rewarding you with a chest. That chest isn't the only reward, though; completing the mirror also reveals a bunch of obscured chests in the surrounding area.
Here's where the genius of the mirrors comes in. These obscured chests require 'Etheral Key Charges' to open. These charges are a stacking buff unique to Castora. With the right masteries, you get some upon entering a map and completing a mirror minigame, but they're primarily earned by completing events or killing powerful enemies. The key to all of this is that opening these chests is incredibly profitable, even after they were nerfed.
What I appreciate about the mirror farm is how well it incentivizes players to actually participate in the map. Just about every map released post-launch has had some sort of incentive for doing events, but that incentive is usually just small amounts of map-specific currency. This often doesn't work super well, since metas or node farming tend to be much better methods of farming currency, and these single-map currencies can only be used for so many things before a player no longer needs them. Castora's mirror farm, on the other hand, solves both of these problems. The high number of chests on each map all but requires you to participate in random events, and the farm rewards you with gold instead of a map-specific currency—something that will remain valuable forever.
None of this is super groundbreaking, I suppose; I just appreciate how well-designed this little system is.
Tiered Renown Hearts
Tiered renown hearts make a return from Janthir Wilds. I have mixed feelings on their implementation, which hasn't changed much from JW.
First, the good. Castora's tiered hearts are a little more rewarding than JW's, and renown tokens are a little more plentiful. I feel that the changes from completing the hearts are less compelling than what we saw in Lowland Shore, and some of the hearts themselves... kinda suck. Yeah, I'm mostly just talking about the hunter's camp; it's genuinely baffling how bad that heart is, and how arbitrary the turn-in limits are.Overall, there haven't been any real significant updates to the system like I'd hoped. It isn't a bad inclusion in the expansion, but it isn't anything to write home about, either.
Exploration, Skimmers, and etc.
Castora feels great to explore. Both maps have a good deal of verticality—Shipwreck Strand with the cliffs jutting up out of the beaches and its many hidden underwater grottos and caves, Starlit Weald with its towering trees and winding valleys—and are packed to the brim with things to do. Unique events, multiple jumping puzzles per map, tons of things to see and little secrets to find—Castora has it all. The vibes in both maps are immaculate, as well; just being in Castora is very pleasant.
One thing I personally find strange is the lack of repeatable hero challenges. They've been a staple since HoT, but VoE's combat challenges aren't repeatable. For that matter, there are also very few combat HPs to begin with; the vast majority are communes. Those are both a tad disappointing, though VoE does make up for it somewhat with the fact that each class has some unique interactions with some of the HPs, which are neat.
Personally, I think both of the new maps are easy 10/10s. They look great, they've got good metas, they're put together well, they're chock full of events and secrets, and they're overall just very fun to explore.
What makes exploration even more enjoyable is the new set of masteries for the Skimmer mount. The team did a really good job of designing the new maps in such a way that the skimmer is often your best choice for getting around, ensuring you get plenty of time to use its new abilities. Its new little dash is great to use, you can basically fly with maxed masteries, and aetherlocation is neat, if not situational.
Conclusion
My hopes are very high going forward with VoE. The story so far is very compelling, with fun new characters and interesting themes for the narrative to tackle. Of course, both SotO and JW had promising starts with their stories only to botch the endings, so we'll have to see where VoE goes from here. Story aside, the new maps and all the content within are also incredibly strong. Compared to JW, where the first map didn't have much to do once you'd gotten all the achievements and the second felt largely empty, both of VoE's maps are stuffed full of content.
Based just on the content we've gotten here at launch, I feel like VoE is gearing up to be the best of the new-model expansions so far. I'm eager to see how some of the other things the expansion has to offer—namely the changes to raids and its instanced encounters—and to see how well the new three-act structure helps the team in pacing out the story and content. What do you think?
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