Guild Wars 2

I honestly felt the Tower of Nightmares brought back feelings of nostalgia. The open dungeon crawling experience genuinely felt a bit like GW1. And if this is a sign of more things to come, then count me in. Doing a dungeon (if we can call the tower that) is a lot more fun when you are doing it with random other players. Then there’s also various events, and random Nightmare Rooms opening up. And what’s this, good rewards, and achievements that are not grindy? Dare I say this is heading the right way? I also really liked the final boss, because he looks cool, and wasn’t frustrating. He has clear tells, and is challenging enough, but not too challenging.

The only area where the Tower of Nightmare is lacking, is the story. While it is fun to see familiar characters like Rox, Braham, Kasmeer and Marjory again, Scarlet’s character doesn’t expand further than the cliche Saturday morning cartoon villain she already was. The final cut scene where she recounts her past crimes, further emphasizes how there wasn’t any good reason for it all. It’s basically just her twirling her mustache at the player and being crazy. All we need now is for her to sit in a chair and pet a cat, and we have the ending to every Inspector Gadget episode.

But bad story aside, I look forward to seeing more of these open PVE dungeons (and I realize I’m using the word “dungeons” in a very liberal way). This really is a great experiment, to combine an open world experience, with instanced Nightmare Rooms and an instanced final boss battle.

This is the first Living Story installment involving Scarlet in which I feel that things have progressed. It’s the only Scarlet-story in which I was struck by the feeling that maybe the developers have a real, solid plan for this character. During that cutscene, she came across as someone with a plan, who’s winning and is revelling in that, but who is also aiming towards something bigger. That may be down to the voice acting, which conveyed that feeling but I’m hoping that said voice acting is the result of developer directions.

What I want now is for the developers to handle the fallout. One of the biggest weaknesses of the Living Story’s… well, story, is the total lack of denouement. Things happen, then something else happens but there’s nothing to wrap up what happened before. Kiel/Southsun is better in this regard but the Scarlet plot just jumps from one thing to the next. I want to know why the Molten Alliance is so working when its members seemed so resentful at the end of F&F, I want to know how the Krait will react to the death of this Prophet, how their obelisks are similar to the Bloodstone’s material and I want to be given a few (just a few, please) answers about what Scarlet actually wants.

Jumping from event to event without learning anything gets frustating.