Guild Wars 2

I love reading every bit of dialogue. When I got to Southsun Cove for the new changes, I spoke to Kiel first and bam, inside the instance. I complete it, and everything’s fine.

Later on I notice the NPCs around her were supposed (maybe they weren’t and all this rant is for nothing) to have a special dialogue that they don’t have anymore, because they act as if I already completed the instance (which I did, of course).

But now I’ve missed that dialogue forever, unless I find someone who took screenshots or recorded it. Being account-bound, I can’t check it with other characters.

These kind of things happen too much. Why can’t we get lore in a decent and consistent way? I’m tired, really, really tired of needing to check every single detail to learn what it’s going on. I love the story, but I hate needing to hunt it, waiting minutes idle for the NPCs to trigger the scene and say their line, searching books between bushes to find the basic grasp of the story around the respective area, etc. That could be cool for “deep” extra lore, but is terrible for what should be basic knowledge.

Still, even if these particular NPCs didn’t have any special pre-instance dialogue, I’m just tired of how the lore is handled in this game, and wanted to see if I’m alone or not.

I agree they need a better way of getting us in the story. A Quest system wouldn’t hurt.

This occurred to me after I completed the instance as well. I spoke the NPCs, noticed they seemed to respond to the fact that I’d finished the instance (which I was actually pleasantly surprised about, considering Levvi didn’t even have a different response after you retrieved all her samples), and wondered if they would have had different dialogue if I had talked to them beforehand. Certainly a shame to miss out if they do, I like the little dialogue blurbs.

Its possible the dialogue that had would have been the same dialogue they had during earlier parts of the event, but if anyone has not completed the instance yet and could check the named NPCs around the camp before doing so, that’d be cool.

I agree with the general idea that the story was rather poorly handled during Last Stand at Southsun. So little info was given in an easy-to-find way, it was either crammed in random NPC conversations (which you were lucky if you saw, considering how infrequently they occurred and the fact that most people probably don’t just stand around waiting to hear random conversations), stuck in out-of-game blog posts, ect. I didn’t actually mind the diaries, I felt those were fine, but everything else was just so disjointed and lacking. As I mentioned earlier, key NPCs like Levvi didn’t even have any sort of response for you after you did the tasks they asked you to.

Last Stand could have really benefited from a number of instanced cutscenes like Flame and Frost had. At the very least there should have been a scene for talking to Levvi after getting the samples in which she would have stated what she discovered from the samples and how they were tampering with the wildlife, and her suspicions of Sylvari involvement, then a scene with Keil and Henrick talking about how Henrick worked with Canach. There should have also been a scene with Keil at the start of the second part where she explained how they found Canach’s lair and that they were starting an operation to capture him.

I wish that most of these living story events were added to the personal story. I mean, since we are living within it! I feel like ending the personal story at Zhaitan should eventually be expanded on so that the player does not feel like Zhaitan’s was the end and the monthly adventures weren’t so insignificant.

Lonami.2987:

Later on I notice the NPCs around her were supposed (maybe they weren’t and all this rant is for nothing) to have a special dialogue that they don’t have anymore, because they act as if I already completed the instance (which I did, of course).

But now I’ve missed that dialogue forever, unless I find someone who took screenshots or recorded it. Being account-bound, I can’t check it with other characters.

You didn’t miss any dialogue if you have spoken to the npcs before the patch. The dialogue the NPCs have doesn’t change when you do the instance, it changed with the patch. Only Kiel reacts differently whether you did the instance or not.

If I didn’t know better I’d say “there’s lore to all this?”

Seriously, for a game that was supposed to do things differently the feel is pretty similar to all those ‘other’ games.

I logged in and saw something in a quest log saying to go to southsun. I ran around southsun and beat up various people and did various mundane tasks (yep – I’m the hero that helped defeat Zhaitan, let me go and collect some plant samples for you) but really saw no rhyme or reason to it all other than everything is mad at everything.

I logged in a few days later and saw a new thing in the quest log saying something about someone named Canach that I’d not previously heard anything of. I followed the big yellow star (may as well have been an exclamation point – why not) and walked through a cave to be immediately attacked without provocation (or even dialogue) by some guy who seems to like mines but can’t invest in a decent encryption system. I apparently was catching him for the ineffectual lionguard but his master plan was already too far gone to be stopped (mu-ha-ha-ha).

This feels awfully similar to any other quest based MMO, except those (the better ones anyway) manage to use the structure to relay more information that frames the actions and occasionally manages to hide tired mechanics behind decent storylines.

Apparently Canach’s master plan involved a big bag of Hit points but to be honest – I just can’t bring myself to care enough to see it through.

I agree. These events need more cinematics and the like in order to better present the story to us instead of hoping that we happent to stumble upon the information as we randomly jaunt about.