VoE's final patch is out. It's been a great expansion so far, but both of its predecessors—SotO and JaWi—struggled severely with sticking the landing, both in content and the story. Does VoE fare better?
Just in case, beware that this article will contain major spoilers for the story and all other content released in this patch.
Story
Yes. Yes, it does, because this finale is incredible. Let's go through things chronologically.
We start with Ludo exposing and ousting Yahk and Flax, the two members of the Arcane Council who have aligned with the inquest, and whose corruption made Vloxx's plans possible. It would've been very easy to just gloss over this detail, but I'm glad the team went to the effort of showing the councilors getting their just deserts. This section also gives us some great characterization for Ludo, and it serves to reinforce some of the main themes of the story, showing that we can band together to root out evil and solve our problems.
Next up, we have to actually track down Vloxx, which brings us to a new character, High Steward Fillics, who I quite like despite them only getting a little screentime. With their help we uncover the path to Leyspring Hollow, which is a nice, unique little puzzle instance that felt really refreshing to me. Running through the dark and lighting torches isn't revolutionary gameplay, but it felt like exactly the type of encounters you'd want to see in the game's story mode.
Once we get our bearings in the new map, there are two things on the docket: we need to deal with both Kuda and Vloxx. Kuda gets only one story chapter dedicated to her, then the rest of her story is allocated to the meta, which I think is fair. Vloxx, on the other hand, gets plenty of time to really flesh out his exact goal and ideology, and for the Commander to understand him and what they need to prove to talk him down. This coalesces into a climactic final battle—and I'm very glad to be able to say that it is climactic. I'll get into specifics below, but I really like that we actually succeed in talking Vloxx down and ending things peacefully; it's something that hasn't happened with any previous main villains.
As things wind down and we finish speaking to all of our allies, we get to what's honestly my favorite part of the story. After years of nothing but nonstop conflict, the Commander finally gets to slow down, relax, and take a well-earned break. Considering we're about to have a real-world break in content releases for a couple years, this conclusion feels incredibly appropriate. It also does a great job of driving home the main theme of the story. For each race, there's a unique scenario where you help someone near your capital out with a simple, low-stakes problem. It's a genuinely beautiful moment that perfectly encapsulates the Commander's ideology and shows us why exactly Vloxx was wrong.
I've mentioned it a few times, but let's go over the themes at play. I harped a lot in the last review about how many of GW2's past expacs suffered from not having much in the way of overarching themes. VoE commits hard to exploring the fatal flaw of reality—that no matter what you do, there will always be another problem, another villain. For every one thing you solve, another issue crops up elsewhere; it isn't truly possible to create a perfect world. Despite this, the Commander believes that the world is still worth fighting for. Vloxx tries to take the easy way out, to eliminate the very concept of conflict, but fails to realize that a world with no friction, no suffering, and no death would also be a world with no joy, no pleasure, and no life. Every problem connects, compounding infinitely, but in the same vein, every good deed you do also ripples throughout the entire world. No one person can play god and fix everything; the best we can do is lead by example, help out wherever we can, and work together with our neighbors to create a better and better world.
This is why I love the ending so much. The Commander settles down for a break, but it's still in their nature to always help where they're needed. They see a small problem, a random stranger in need of help with a daily chore, and they help this person for the same reason they slew the Elder Dragons. Because every problem is worth solving the right way, and every good deed compounds to make the world that much better.
Characters
VoE continues to have a really strong showing in regards to its cast. Let's start with the people I have the least to say about.
Sayida didn't end up having too much development this patch, at least emotionally. It's clear in retrospect that her primary role in the story was just to be the contrarian who distrusted Vloxx from the get-go and who didn't believe he could be redeemed. Once that role was fulfilled, she didn't have much of an arc or personal journey to go on. That said, her presence here doesn't feel wasted, either. We do get to see her start to really come into her own as a leader and politician, and knowing her background as a pirate who nearly turned us in to Joko, that's a pretty interesting change to see, even if it's subtle.
PTM leaves me very confused. He similarly doesn't feel like a wasted character, since he does provide a couple insights that prove invaluable to moving the story forward in this final patch, but those still feel like things that probably could've been done by anyone, which leaves me wondering: why introduce this guy? I can only assume the team have more plans for him in later stories. If that's the case, it's good to know they're already looking that far ahead.
Canach's arc in VoE nicely compliments the overall themes of the expac. In the previous patch, he expressed how he'd decided to journey to Castora with us because he felt the urge to try and be a hero again. Though he could easily continue living a life of luxury as a businessman, he felt conflicted, like he hadn't done enough. By the end, he seems to have settled on a nice balance. He genuinely does find fulfillment in helping people, but that doesn't mean he has to constantly commit to grand, world-saving adventures or abandon the business side of things. He realizes he can accept just helping out where he can, which mirrors the sentiments of the Commander in the finale. Every good deed makes the world that much better.
Rytlock's purpose in this plot is finally revealed this time around, and it was definitely worth the wait. I'd actually been thinking recently about how his identity as a revenant had never really been used for anything interesting over the years, to the degree that we don't even really know who he channels. This patch addresses that in a very interesting way—by having him channel Sidony. This proves invaluable to countering Vloxx's plans, but it's also made clear that Sidony is sticking with him, which I'm sure the team can do some fun things with in the future.
Similar to the last patch, Kuda has a really strong showing here. She's delightfully evil, and the game does a pretty good job at making her presence felt in the map with all the audio logs she's left around to describe her atrocious plans and really, really establish her insurmountable arrogance. She's a simple, but incredibly fun villain, and I think dedicating the meta to her was a good move. It gave the main story plenty of time to focus on Vloxx while still giving her some proper time to shine.
The way she discovers how to use rifts to kidnap people is pretty cool, and I like how she utilizes this to really get the drop on us at the start of the meta. The way the Commander, Canach, and Sayida's immediate reaction to this was "We're dropping everything to go murder her NOW" was also a really great moment, and I appreciate that she actually managed to win one over us again here. In general VoE did a good job at making her feel genuinely threatening. While it's clear she's very arrogant, it isn't entirely unfounded; she's clearly skilled at playing on people's emotions and using that to her advantage, as we see when she lures us into a trap to kidnap Canach.
Isgarren gets to do some interesting stuff this time around, too. The previous patch more or less completed his character arc of learning to be able to let down his guard and rely on others more, and once again that ties really well into what this story is trying to say. I also really like how he prepares the Commander for the burden of Ascension, and the reveal that part of the reason he was able to withstand it himself is that he created a "what-if" fractal that revealed he would eventually become a universe-ruling tyrant if he let the power get to his head. It really adds a lot of context to his actions so far. In SotO the Commander and others criticized him and the Astral Ward heavily for staying out of many of the world's problems, but it makes total sense why Isgarren would be so hesitant to reach too far when the thought of losing himself like this was always looming over him. It's also very potent that he of all people is willing to sacrifice his own power for the sake of the Commander and Vloxx.
That brings us to the star of the show. The discussion in the previous segment on the story's main themes really summarized a lot of what Vloxx has going on in this patch. He's utterly convinced that he can solve things, and that his way is the only way. He got so bogged down in looking at the big picture, at trying to make a perfect world, that he lost track of what's important in life and how his power can be used for good on a smaller, more realistic scale. He got dangerously close to becoming the tyrant Isgarren could've become, and he's just barely saved from that fate by the Commander.
I mentioned this earlier, but I really like that Vloxx survives. That's a unique trait for him as a villain. We've had plenty of antagonists get reformed throughout GW2—Canach and Sayida are just a couple examples—but never the actual main antagonist of a story. Vloxx nearly rips apart the fabric of reality, but to the end he really did believe what he was doing was for the best for everyone, and so he receives the chance to make amends and help the world the right way. It's a very touching ending for him, and I look forward to seeing what his presence could potentially add to future stories.
Let's run through some of the side characters real quick. I appreciate that some of the SotO cast—Dagda, Lyhr, R'tchikk, Gladium—make appearances this time around even if they don't play very large roles. With how large SotO's cast was, the natural fear one would have is that the game would go to a ton of effort to introduce all these new characters and then just not use them again, but it seems that they're committed to trying to avoid that problem. Here's hoping that a couple of them will get to join our next adventure as main characters to get some real development out of them. I also really liked seeing Waiting Dawn, previously Waiting Sorrow, appear with a new name to match her development in JaWi. Shoutout to Poky for that suggestion.
Westergard's role here is largely as a representative of Kela and Gwyllian, which is a bit funny but pretty endearing overall. I definitely did expect her to play a bigger role in the beginning, but this feels like an appropriate level of involvement in the end. Fillics is a new character this patch who we don't get to spend much time with, but I really like his manner of speech. He and the other stewards realizing the Seers are extinct is a very interesting plotline that I hope gets followed up on in the future; I'd like to see Fillics again and know what his people end up doing.
Gameplay
While this isn't something I've seen much discussion around, the gameplay aspect of the story was a real step up. There were some parts in 'The Only Way' that I felt iffy about or just outright disliked (looking at you, pipe puzzle), but there wasn't a single point throughout Code of Creation where I wasn't having fun.
I mentioned already the early instance where you navigate a dark cave, which I thought was a really fun section, but the rest of the story is good, too. The bulk of it is pretty standard stuff, but the team knew where to focus their efforts. The final battle against Vloxx was a really fun encounter, and I loved the sections where we got teleported to little mini-instances. The fight against fractal Isgarren was great, too.
There was one final story collection in this section, but it was a really short and easy one, literally only took me like ten minutes. It was nice to have a quick run through all the maps in the lead-up to the finale.
I'm starting to notice I'm being a bit repetitive with this review. A whole lot of "that was nice" and "this was fun". I choose to say that's just further proof of how good a patch this is.
Leyspring Hollows
The final map is a small one, but it does a good job at hiding how small it really is by spreading everything out through winding caves and corridors. This is the first time we've ever had a zone that's fully underground (though Gyala was quite close), but the team did a great job with it. It almost makes me wonder if this was a proof-of-concept for more underground zones, perhaps for an expansion focused on the depths?
The team continue to impress with new enemy types, including champs that are very fun to fight. There are plenty of events in Leyspring, and though there are a few simple ones and repeats the variety feels pretty good overall. I don't dislike either of the hearts, either.
It's also worth mentioning that the map is just beautiful. It reminds me a lot of Tangled Depths, but with much more straightforward navigation.
Depths of Cruelty
The new meta starts with a few radio calls where Kuda kidnaps several notable NPCs, including R'tchikk and Wavehawk Pete. The charge to retrieve them is headed primarily by Sayida and Waiting Dawn, which gives both of them a good opportunity for more characterization.
The meta can be divided into four stages. First is a set of three capture events located in three different areas of the map. At each location there are three capture rings you must hold against the Inquest, forcing you to split even further. Having to split up twice-over is a nice throughline from the Inquest segment of Gwyllian's battle. Also present here are targetable laser cannons reminiscent of the cannons from Hammerhart. I appreciate the way the team naturally incorporated the previous metas' mechanics here.
Once all 9 total areas are captured, it's time for the second stage. Portals appear in each capture ring that will send you to face a boss very similar to the Inquest Golem Mk II world boss, but with its annoying electric floor replaced with some shockwaves on its punches and a variation of Gwyllian's door mechanic. Players take turns entering to fight the boss while others stay behind to defend the portals from champion golems. At the end, everyone gets to finish off the boss together to end the second phase.
Next are the two minibosses, Subject Gamma and Project 5388. The former is an evolution of Subjects Alpha and Beta from the core dungeon story, while 5388 is a horrific reanimated cadaver of Sebb's cyborgified corpse. These bosses serve to introduce some of the main mechanics of the final fight. One has players catching a bouncing orb, similar to Viirastra's main mechanic in the Shattered Observatory fractal. The other has players get captured in targetable vats; the rest of the squad must save them before they're transformed into Mindless Mutations (when this mechanic appears, it's a great opportunity to make a joke in mapchat about players of <insert game you dislike here>). Both bosses also have a decent slew of standard AoEs and such to keep things interesting between the main mechanics.
All of this coalesces in one final battle against Kuda and her Twisted Creation, a fusion of the two previous bosses that wields Kuda's legendary sword, Torrs Calare. This boss inherits the mechanics of its two parts, with some new additions as well—large directional AoEs, spreads applied to every player (be real careful in melee range when you see these), and Kuda herself charging up power during the vats mechanic, requiring some of the squad to fly up to her position above the arena and break her shield. It's a great fight, probably one of my favorite world bosses in the entire game. The one place where it does seriously suffer is with visibility, but that's largely due to it being new and thus every map being at capacity with tons of player skill effects everywhere; that should get better over time as it falls to a more reasonable attendance level.
JPs, Adventures, and Minidungeons
This map has quite a few of these extra little activities, and while I think a lot of players tend to overlook them I want to spend a bit of time highlighting them here as well, starting with the two jumping puzzles.
First is Inquest Cache, a short and simple JP that takes place in the Attuning Chamber. You climb up the wall to the first checkpoint, glide to the second, then have to use the ley line that runs in a circle around the room to glide backwards past the first checkpoint to reach the third, which is pretty neat. From there it's just a precise glide and more climbing to the end. Short, sweet, and unique. No notes. Then there's the other JP, which... well, it's one of those three things.
Coleopteran Cavern is primarily a struggle of navigation. The area is filled with winding and intersecting paths, the vast majority of which are dead ends. It's also full of enemy beetles that will attack you, which puts you in combat and thus slows you down. Between that and waiting on the Rush skill to come off cooldown (because its swiftness is needed for many of the jumps), there's a surprising amount of standing around in this puzzle—and that's not counting the time you'll spend looking around and wondering "Where the hell does it want me to go?" The puzzle makes very heavy use of what I'm going to call "anti-signposting", and while it is a unique challenge, I think it overall makes for a bad experience.
If you don't know, signposting is when a game uses the environment or level design to inform the player of what the "correct path" is. If you've heard the yellow paint controversy the last couple years, that's an example of signposting. Good games generally do it in more subtle ways. For example, platformers often use collectables—coins in Mario games, rings in Sonic games, etc—to direct players. In the case of GW2, it often uses environmental details to draw a path, particularly in more recent puzzles. In this one, that's the red mushroom that line the route you're meant to take to the end.
The problem (or, really, one of several problems) is that the mushrooms line every path, most of which are dead ends. Some of these dead ends lead to chests and the Mastery Point, some loop back to earlier parts of the puzzle, and others literally just end without bringing you anywhere. It seems to be designed to deliberately mislead you, and this isn't the only anti-signpost here either. The route I ended up finding didn't start at the "start" of the puzzle, but on the ground level off in a far corner. The first jump of this route is on a piece of wonky geometry that had me doubting myself several times, because it didn't seem like I was actually meant to be able to get onto it, and the route doesn't touch either of the two checkpoints. All in all, it's just a very strange way to design a JP.
Moving on to the minidungeon, Ruins to Riches is a fun dungeon-crawling romp that has you join Ember Doomforge and Dougal Keane in pilfering some riches from a boobytrapped seer ruin. You must solve several quick puzzles, none of which are particularly hard, in order to reach the chest at the end. It has nice variety and doesn't overstay its welcome, and its nice to actually see Dougal do something; for how important a character he is lore-wise, he had basically zero presence in the game before.
Finally, there are two adventures. Aetherlocation Detective is a really simple and easy one where you use your skimmer's aetherlocation to detect and collect orbs around an area; inoffensive, but forgettable. The real star of the show is Serpent Simulator, a recreation of the classic game Snake located in an Inquest base. It's... literally just Snake, so like, if you like Snake (and have good ping) you'll like it. There's also a hidden achievement earned by solving the game and achieving the max score, though from what I've seen there's some inconsistencies with snake growth that mean you'll usually win a few squares before you fill up the entire board. That's actually appreciated in this case, as this board is on a 9x9 grid which can force some awkward shapes.
Convergence: Nexus of Eternity
This update gave us our third Convergence, and this one is quite different from the others. It features only a single boss—Vloxx, specifically the ascended version of him we face as the final boss of the expac. It also lacks a large pre-event, getting you into the main meat of the encounter very quickly with just a short bout of enemy slaying and a few champs before the main man shows up. It's like if the first stage of the Outer Nayos pre-event went straight to the boss instead of making you split to the four islands.
The main gimmick of the fight is that at several points in the fight, including right at the beginning, portals will appear around the edge of the arena which will take players to miniature recreations of past areas. In each one players must complete an event to clear the area, which usually just means fighting a bunch of champion enemies. Two portals appear each time, and once both are dealt with Vloxx becomes vulnerable to damage and the main phase of the battle begins.
These portal zones are where the encounter's variety comes from. They appear in a random order, and if your group does well you'll likely only get to participate in one of each pair, meaning each run should theoretically have you visiting a different combination of portal zones. I do like this approach, but I feel it isn't used to its full potential since most of the events we get here feel very samey. As mentioned above, most of them consist of just killing a few champion enemies. VoE has stellar enemy design on its champs, but most of these are taken from past content and are thus little more than glorified DPS golems. There are some more interesting events here, like the torch run and crushing the scarab plague, and several of the others have unique mechanics to go along with the champs, but I feel it still would've benefited from the enemies themselves being a bit more interesting.
Vloxx, at the very least, is a pretty great boss. For most of the fight, your main focus is one two mechanics. He'll frequently apply either greens or spreads to a large number of players. The greens can't overlap each other or else anyone venn-diagram'd will get floated, and the spreads drop a persistent AoE on the ground. Dealing with these properly, and accoutning for the droves of open-world players who deal with them improperly, make up the bulk of the fight. In addition to those, Vloxx also takes a handful of his very cool attacks from the story fight and raid, which are just as fun to deal with here as in those instances.
Essences in this Convergence work quite a bit differently than in the other two. There's nobody to turn them in to; instead, they're automatically turned in if you get to 50 stacks of essence. This increases the progress towards revival and delays the fail condition, just like the other Convergences. Additionally, you'll get access to a SAK skill that's unique based on your class.
Overall, this instance is quite fun. I think it isn't quite as good as Mount Balrior for me, but Vloxx is a pretty good fight. My only real complaint is with how the champions in the portals are mostly kinda lame.
Strike Mission
Moving on from the Convergence instance that recreates our final battle with Vloxx, let's discuss the raid instance that recreates our final battle with Vloxx. In short, it's pretty good!
Vloxx himself has a quite good variety of attacks, all of which are pretty fun to deal with and many of which are also used in his Convergence. He creates player-attached greens that can't be stacked, he does a big three-arrow attack that draws impassable walls on the floor for a while, he does a teleport with a big shockwave, and he has those two really flashy attacks where he creates an absolute shit ton of semicircle AoEs that are really fun to dodge.
The main gimmick of this fight is that Vloxx gains an Empowered debuff over time, similar to Cerus or Greer. Failing mechanics causes him to get more Empowered, increasing his outgoing damage and also granting him damage resistance. At the same time, players start with 10 stacks of a buff called Ascension; certain attacks strip these stacks, and losing them all kills you.
There are a few points where Vloxx will summon some champion Aspect adds that add additional pressure to the fight with some simple AoE attacks. These adds respawn shortly after they're killed, but they also drop collectable orbs. Grabbing these will restore a players Ascension stacks and strip Empowered from Vloxx at the same time. There are also points where Vloxx becomes invulnerable and will start spamming a large, dangerous AoE. You'll need to kill an Aspect to cause him to get a defiance bar, then CC him.
Overall, the fight's actually pretty simple in practice. You don't really need to worry about Empowered or Ascension too much, and most of the mechanics can be summarized as "don't step in bad". Compared to Kela, he's much easier and definitely puggable with casual LFG groups. It definitely seems to me that they saved a lot of the juiciest bits of this one for the (L)CM, so I look forward to those.
Solitary Throne Fractal
This patch gave us the 25th fractal, meaning there are no longer any dupes in each tier's lineup. This fractal is actually a recreation of a story encounter, specifically the one where you fight a fractal version of Isgarren that became a universe-ruling tyrant. I was quite happy when I heard this, because I distinctly remember thinking "this would make a good strike" when I was fighting the story version of this boss, and facing it in a fractal works just as well. I became a bit worried, however, when I heard other players' thoughts. How did it stack up when I tried it myself?
Well, I have to preface this section by saying that I haven't really been able to give this fractal the fair try it deserves. I tried, but wasn't able to get anyone to join a group for it. I guess you don't get to play instanced content if you wait to do it after day 1 of a new patch, amirite? I ended up resorting to doing it at T1, that way I could solo the pre-event while I waited for people. I did manage to get a full group and give the boss a few goes, but my teammates... let's just say they weren't up to par, and we didn't end up clearing the fight. I was able to get them deep enough to at least see the final phase, so I think I've seen all the mechanics, but I don't know if there are major differences at higher tiers, and my only reference for how the fight feels to play is in the context of doing it with a really bad group. Basically, take what I have to say here with a grain of salt. I'll probably edit this section later with more comprehensive thoughts if/when I get to experience the fractal under better circumstances.
I quite like the pre-event, first of all. Jumping between the platform's is a fun little mini-jumping puzzle, though it can be a bit annoying how it almost always sends you way higher than you need, forcing you to wait to fall down. The SAK to dash forward isn't actually necessary to move between any of the areas, so I'd honestly just remove it and replace it with one that sends you straight down to the ground instead. That'd solve a lot of this fractal's problems right there. On each platform you fight some themed elemental enemies while avoiding a stage hazard—a spinning fire wall, then an ice cloud that chases you, then a loop of expanding ring AoEs, and finally spreads that are occasionally applied to a random person. The elemental enemies on each platform also have unique attacks, though they're simple. It's an appreciated touch to make the fights that much more unique.
After dealing with all four elements, you face off against Isgarren at the top, who has taken the form of the Eternal Tyrant. He takes several main mechanics from the story fight—spreads that drop a lingering AoE that sucks you in and spins you around, some basic AoE attacks, and a move where he shoots out projectiles in a spinning spiral. The main addition is a move where he targets one player and shoots a seeking projectile to them that spawns a "launch field" under their feet. This is a small AoE that sends you really high into the air when you step on it, which you can imagine is really, really, really annoying to get hit by. I think it can be consistently dodged, but it's really hard to see when you've been targeted with it. The only indicator is a tiny target icon over your head, and the projectile itself is just a transparent wispy thing. A more obvious marker, and the projectile itself also standing out more, would make this mechanic a lot better. A way to instantly rocket yourself back down, like the SAK I suggested earlier, would also help a lot. It would be even easier to implement here, since you don't already have a different skill taking up that slot.
Mr Tyrant has some split phases, roughly around every 25% interval form what I could tell. During these, he remains invulnerable in the middle while elemental enemies spawn around the edge and run towards him. You're meant to kill them before they reach him, but I honestly couldn't tell what the punishment was for failing to do so. On death, all of these elementals drop a launch field, which is very very very annoying if you're playing melee. These ones should definitely be given a grace period before they become active. That way, y'know, 50% of all builds aren't just torture to play in this phase. There are also earth elementals which, unlike the others, are immune to damage and must be CC'd instead. This mechanic itself is a fine way to mix things up, but the CC bar is way too big. Like, it needs to be about a fifth as large as it is, stopping these guys is not reasonable unless you bring a full CC build.
In the final phase, Isgarren starts using all of the stage hazards from the earlier platforms, which is a nice way to ramp up the final phase with mechanics you've already been taught how to deal with. This is unfortunately where my journey ended, so I don't know if there's any sort of desperation phase at the end.
Overall, I see the workings of a good fight here. The only big problem is the annoying launch fields, but they're a really big problem. They're overly punishing, disproportionately harder to avoid than everything else, and result in you spending a lot of time doing nothing while you wait to fall back to the arena. This fight also seems way too hard. I'm all for hard fights, and if this were a strike mission that'd be fine, but fractals are meant to all sit within a similar difficulty range. Most of the newer ones are a significant step above the rest as well, and I'd even argue some bosses like Kanaxai may need tuning down at lower tiers, too, but as a general rule I think the existence of a fight you can't reasonably prog through at T1 with low-skill players is a massive issue for fractals as a system.
Now, the team have already announced a number of fixes for the fractal, so I'm hoping a lot of these issues will be addressed. I definitely see the potential of a really good fight here; I just hope the team can do what needs to be done so that potential isn't wasted.
Summary
This was a really big patch. We got the conclusion to the story, a Convergence, a strike, a fractal, and a new map with a large meta-event. Overall, the quality across all of this is generally pretty high. There are some kinks to work out, as there always are with any GW2 release, but I think this is genuinely one of if not the strongest content drops we've gotten in the past several years. The team did a really good job with this one, and that has me really excited about GW2's future.
When it comes to my content, I'm not sure if the next couple years of patches will be the sorts that I can really do this same style of review for, given that we're presumably getting mostly reworks of old content instead of entirely new content. I'll play it by ear. If this does end up being the last review for a while, I at least hope it was an enjoyable read. Thanks for sticking with it, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on the update as well.
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