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Guild Wars 2’s Asuran alphabet deciphered: full of in-jokes

Asura_Alphabet

After an evening without all that much to do and an eye on turning gibberish into something legible, Reddit user Sinder Roze has cracked the Asura alphabet, turning the scrawl seen throughout Guild Wars 2, mostly on bits of high tech wizardry, into legible type, along with all sorts of lovely in-jokes for Portal, Mass Effect, Metroid and Firefly. Which are just the sort of pop-culture references you’d hope might pop up in such a charming game.

The alphabet was cracked mostly through hard graft, although once Sinder Roze had figured out some basic words it became an awful lot easier. All it takes is a few letters and you’re away. It’s basically like Sudoku.

There’s even a close approximation of the alphabet, nice and clear.

Phrases like “There is no asymmetrical nutriment infuser” (Matrix), “Neurotoxin levels critical. Neurotoxin emmiters now emitting neurotoxin.” (Portal) and “Immediate replacement required. It’s a nothing part until you don’t have one.” (Firefly) have apparently been ripped from some textures taken directly out of the game, leaving plenty more to decipher once you actually get your hands on the final product.

Really it’s just nice to know that these things are in there, especially when they’re so close to the surface. Makes me think that maybe ArenaNet have put a whole lot else in place for us to discover, like the secret jumping puzzles that exist only to be traversed. That and the lovely loot at the end of them.