I think we’re on to the more meaty part of this article that may have light spoilers. During the preview event, I was treated to a very small part of the initial story for Repentance and then we completed part of the meta event on the new map, Mistburned Barrens. I will also talk about the new mastery track here and some insights that the team shared.
A really quick recap of Janthir Wilds so far is that the titans showed up and were wreaking havoc in the Janthir region. We go to stop them and during the last set of story chapters, the Wayfinder defeats Decima, Greer, and Ura. However, Ura teases as she dies that something more will come through the gate that has been left open.
It has since been confirmed that Ura was talking about the mursaat, a group of enemies that have been in the background almost like a boogeyman since the original Guild Wars Prophecies. In Guild Wars 2, we’ve had Balthazar disguise himself as Lazarus and of course the Astral Ward member and mentor to Zojja, Mabon as the main representatives of mursaats.
Of course, the White Mantle are also connected to the mursaat, but I’d need to do some refresher to remember all that. What I do remember is that the mursaat are bad and it’s terrifying that we are going to have to deal with them.
The little bit of the story that I got to play builds off of this and you go with Poised Arrow to a camp set up by the Alliance in Mistburned Barrens. This once again proves that Poised Arrow is just Braham in a bear costume because instead of going with his mother Waiting Sorrow via teleportation, he decides he wants to go by boat and you get put on babysitting duty.
He’s just hairier Braham. Anyways, I hope you like Bloodstone because it appears to be back in a big way which makes sense since we’re dealing with mursaat. When playing through the brief story instance, I did appreciate how intense the vibes were. It was almost horror-adjacent because of the color schemes (a lot of reds) but the vibes are very intense and made me feel like this is a real serious thing; which is good.
After that, we got to participate a little in the map meta event. I think people are going to like it. In my opinion, it’s a lot better than Inner Nayos (low bar, I know) and the overall design approach seems to be better. Essentially, you start at the main camp and take one of three paths to their endpoint.
On the way there, you’ll have to defeat enemies and once you get there, you’ll encounter big bosses. You defeat the boss and get rewards. As you progress in a lane, you’ll get a buff (specific to each lane) that stacks up to thrice which allows you to open more chests at the end of the lane. It reminded me of the Celestial Challenge during the Lunar New Year event in that regard.
Map lead Timothy Cobb shared that each of the three lanes is “extremely different from each other thematically.” I don’t know the top or middle lanes, but the bottom lane is full of Bloodstone. Cobb also mentioned that the team really wants Mistburned Barrens to feel like a new area where the Wayfinder is trying to learn more about the mursaat and shared that the events in the lanes do vary which is nice to hear from a player perspective.
The dev team also shared that the idea behind this meta is that they want it to be running constantly. They want it to be a thing where a player can enter the map and almost always immediately jump into the meta if that’s what they want to do. Another great thing about the map meta is that it contributes to the Heart! I personally love this fact. In addition, the team did say that they are really trying to make sure that players can hop into the meta and find something to do that they would find rewarding.
Now let’s talk about a couple of interesting things that are new with Repentance. On maps there are mist surges which are basically giant updrafts. You can use them with your glider, griffon, skyscale, or warclaw to get a giant vertical boost. It’s fun to play around with them.
Also, there are mursaat mirrors which are part of the new mastery track. Around the map of Mistburned Barrens there will be bloodstone barriers that have things inside them. You can approach them and move around them, but in order to get inside the barrier and access its goodies, you’ll need to use the mursaat mirrors which turn you into a little wisp and you go on a rollercoaster ride around the map into the barrier.
The team said there would be a variety of things in these barriers with examples given of mastery points and things for your warclaw to dig up. Once again, this is a fun little thing. I do wonder if either of these will get broader releases into older maps as that would be cool, but I can see that totally not working.
Finally, I’m just going to share some insights into some things that the team shared that I didn’t know where else to put. First, I did ask when they’d let us play as kodan and they said that they’d put me in a room with tengu fans to fight it out.
I’m sorry, but bear beats chicken (also, tengu were cooler in Guild Wars 1). Also, when asked about inspirations for the new map and such, it was shared that Castlevania was a big inspiration, particularly for the south lane of the meta.
Of course, they’re also pulling a lot these days from Guild Wars Prophecies. A little peak behind the design curtain that I thought was really cool was talking about the overall aesthetic for a lot of the stuff we’ll see and how it matches the mursaat and is even a metaphor for them as you get this gorgeous and shiny gold exterior but then all kinds of other things inside such as the glowing red bloodstone energy and more. The final note I have is that this is the chapter of Janthir Wilds with the least amount of titan involvement, but that doesn’t mean there’s no titan involvement.
I can’t wait to continue the story in Janthir Wilds and explore the new map, Mistburned Barrens. I think it’s going to be a popular map with the meta occurring constantly. Hopefully the rewards draw players to it.
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