Development Stories: Timelines & Retcons

What happened to Grigor?! :D

Great post, thanks for talking about this some more.

I'd like to see more lore and connections with Sirus added to the game. It feels REALLY odd that the first time we find out he's alive is right as we're about to fight him and suddenly he's destroying Oriath. Not only that but in the few moments he takes the portal he's able to basically destroy everything and we have no ability to actually stop him.

This league's boss felt really good because you got to know her, knew what she was trying to do and then you had to fight her.

Sirus by comparison just felt tacked on. Yes, the journals did help but there's nothing like seeing the big bad doing things. By the time you make it to shaper you know that is the guy who KEEPS FREEZING TIME and you want to fight him.

All the other Conquerors seem to be aware that we keep fighting them as their sanity unravels with every battle with us. Sirus on the other hand is unchanging and somewhat plain. Unless Uber Sirus is coming down the path soon (next league maybe?)

Maybe Sirus has nabbed some of the Shaper's powers and the first time you see him is when completing a boss an Exalt drops, time freezes and Sirus (cloaked and hidden) floats over and picks it up and takes it with a quip. Or heck make it a Mirror. "You're not ready for a tool of this power" *takes mirror* I can't think of a better way to make players dislike a character than this.

Anyways, thanks for reading and keep up the good work!

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Rachel wrote:

Let me know in the replies if you think this method of preserving the storyline works for you, what league storylines you want to see continued in Path of Exile 2, and what you think might happen next...

I'd love to see an encore for the Daresso-Merveil love story.

Just for example... maybe Daresso at long last gets to return to his fair lady, Merveil... and he has a cure for her... and she no longer has to be a squid monster... and then, if she's a boss (again), Uncursed Merveil would definitely use Warcries.

I would also like to see Piety come back.

I think it’s great to preserve timelines. But POE 2 seems to only potentially solve problems with league stories up to that point? It would be great if new leagues following POE 2 can find a way to fold into the current story without feeling like we need to wait for a POE 3 to have the stories build on each other...

Zana finds love and solace in Kirac. I wholeheartedly support their relationship. He might not forgive her but she saved his life after all.

I'd love to see how the Primordials/Primevals ended up so deep underground and why they became abyss monsters. or at least some little tidbits towards some ancient ritual during such a long ago before history cataclysm. I think the Primordial Blocks map is one of the most interesting on the atlas simply because the arena boss has some cool displacing earth magic/rolling balls/weird energy shield. And the pit. Also is the city in a mountain or floating? (Maybe I should just infer from that...)1

Also in my headcanon I think Venarius won (this post on narrative design falls in nicely! :D). When Synthesis didn't become part of the league and he entered the map device he became part of the fabric of the "atlas".
He managed to alter a certain timeline of memories and dreams thus changing a certain past. Even in the Cortex he seemingly swishes back into the Valdo map device that exists in his presence.
So it might have muddied up how the Conquerors are the exiles that teamed up with Zana instead of us. And in her missions she always, even before the new atlas, had said she worked with other exiles (like hunting down a maddened rogue exile).

Also I like to think how Shaper and Elder became map archetypes. Venarius taking Valdo/Shapers place and Sirus taking Elder's in the meantime. The small flip on good vs evil. Evil man takes corrupted man's place. Good man becomes corrupted taking evil thing's place. (Not literally taking their places but narratively speaking). I do wish Venarius could play a bigger role in his manipulation's of the past/history/memory/dreams. His boyhood trauma had snowballed into pure narcissistic rage vs Valdo's battles with dementia.

Personally I'd love to see more wonderful allusions to Clark Ashton Smith's short stories (and his contemporaries ;)). Like Tane having slight resemblances to Devotee of Evil. Loooove the eldritch horror and threads of story ending in question marks.

Each league since Beastiary has felt like each has a story left to tell. And has very similar structure so to speak such as those horror short stories. Always starts through the eyes of someone who saw or is doing something, with a twist at the end and more horrific questions than answers at the end! Love it.

I'm waiting for Cassia and Tane to team up in a league. It's so obvious they might get their own 2.0 leagues. Same with Delirium. Tangmazu either being worked into a Karui arc or another league. I'd love to see 2.0 versions of leagues or combine some in new interesting ways to further their influences on the world. Much like Betrayal did narratively. I'm sure Einhar will have a larger role to play leading up to Path of Exile 2. Also combining or making 2.0 leagues can upgrade or change mechanics or new things without throwing in too many narrative ends unless needed. Not that I'm complaining about too much narrative, personally, I love lots of things to read and speculate about!

Also I love the small narrative progression on Scarab descriptions. Winged scarabs shed some light at what happened after the Order of the Djinn fell. Winged Bestiary Scarab? Einhar has a destiny! Helena's axis dream is n delicate premonition! Navali's going to hopefully help or betray us on Karui Isle! Who knows! (Tane called it!)

Truly love the lore in this game. I specialised in narrative deconstruction and analysis in ludonarratives in emergent and embedded storylines. And PoE is so good at it! And it doesn't underestimate it's audience in the least. I'd also like it if Sin would drop a mixtape featuring Sirus. His rhymes are as old as time.

I wrote this on my phone. It's probably a little jumbled or hopefully readable.
༼;´༎ຶ ۝ ༎ຶ༽

I do hope that Conquerors endgame be expanded before being cannonized. I think that the greater problem for players, myself included, got with Conqueror's was that the previous storyline was presented to you way more loudly than Conqueror's, but that, I think, is because it got much more development time in it, years of improving and creating uppon.

Now I like Conquerors, but I fell that they need some love, storywise. Sirus, specially, might need some proper introduction (like Shaper did, in the time of War of Atlas endgame), some buildup that explains why should we care about him.

And, please, put Kirak back in Oriath, after Zana come back. He is a bridge character at most. I need to go to him every time so he speak 1 line, every time I fight a Conqueror. Too annoying!

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Unexis_Xyz wrote:

What happened to Grigor?! :D

I know right?! But maybe in PoE 2 we can find him I hope!

Grigor left without a single word to me, rude bugger, but I suspect his poetic soul has been drawn back home, to Ezomyr. A long journey, but a trek worth taking to find solace among one's own people. Of course, they'll get quite the shock when they see him. Let's hope familial love is as nearsighted as they say!

There're the fine tales Grigor will be able to tell them, of course. Come to think of it, now that Dominus has been knocked off his perch, there's nothing to stop the Ezomytes from learning a thing or two from Grigor's stories. They might even consider invading this jewel in Wraeclast's tarnished crown. I certainly hope they have just such an eye for opportunity... a man could make a tidy sum helping said invaders navigate Sarn and its many hazards.

--Hargan

Grigor is the butterfly that has lost its wings to a cruel child, and this place of respite has become a cage for his pain, a breeding ground of bad memory. We spoke and Grigor shared his resolve with me. He can no longer live with the torment that Piety has injected into his heart.

Like the warrior-poet he is, Grigor has ventured into the unknown, to find a cure for his body and mind, or die in the attempt.

--Maramoa

I've said it before and i'll say it again, the Talisman league could easily be reworked and revisited. This league could introduce new NPCs to further enrich the storyline of Wraeclast. And given how the crafting methods have evolved over the years, i think talismans themselves show more promise than ever to further diversify the selection of gear we have at our disposal to create new characters. I wonder if Einhar could be part of this rework given his demeanor and attire. His altar surereminds me of the talisman's one though.

I am all for methodically canonizing the past leagues into the timeline. I do find it difficult sometimes to justify why an NPC would be simultaneously cognizant to current events while also ignorant to past events recurring.

Zana is the prime example. Years ago, she worked with the exiles to put an end to the War for the Atlas. She was aware of the fall of Dominus and the rest of the events that lead up to the discovery of the map device initially.

Fast forward to the current: She speaks of the events in the past tense. Exiles have become corrupt from spending so much time in the Atlas jumping map to map and searching for power.

In the view of my character, I JUST discovered the device, and I just defeated Dominus. The rest of the events JUST occurred so how could there have been an epic battle over the Atlas by exiles, if the device was just in Oriathan control?

Maybe I'm missing something here ><

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Let me know in the replies if you think this method of preserving the storyline works for you, what league storylines you want to see continued in Path of Exile 2, and what you think might happen next...

I don't know, I feel like it still doesn't make sense. Reason being, if I'm understanding this correctly, is that all the previous leagues and story lines actually existed in Wraeclast, and happen simultaneosly, and the current story is the game version that we're currently in. Cool. But then, who are Conqueror's in relation to us, BEFORE they step into the portal to fight the shaper?

If it's the previous War for the Atlas storyline, then they are the exile from Oriath who beat merveil, the bandits, Dominus, the Beast etc.? They unlocked the vaal pyramid and threw Wraeclast into darkness? Or um, did we just do that? They can't be alternate world Exiles, because Zana and Kirac know them from OUR timeline..

So therefor, they ARE just random exiles. Random nobody exiles that did nothing of note that Zana recruits to help her with the Shaper, we have no clue what they actually end up doing, but needless to say it's probably not what happened during the War for the Atlas versions of the game, because the Oriath Exile did all those things.

I feel like Kirac more than anything breaks this story. Aside from him, all of the elements to this story are people that we meet within the map device that could have come from any timeline/world etc.

Only other way it works is if Baran is the only conqueror that Zana actually met in our universe, but as it stands I'm pretty sure the current story is that they all went into the device for the first time together. So it don't jive that they all came from the device in the first place.

ASIDE from that? Zana has to be the big bad in POE 2. Or at least one of them. Hell maybe all the masters. They follow your exiles into the map device too many times to not be crazy like the conquerors.

I also need a Harbinger part 2.