Guild Wars 2

I’d like to brainstorm with the forum community on how the plot of GW2 could have been better. Please present your opinion carefully and constructively. No “Trahearne should die” or “I love Tybalt” comments, please. Of course you can bring these characters up, but do so logically. Let’s have a well-sculpted commentary with solid arguments and a “this is the problem and why but here’s how we could improve” attitude. I’ll begin, I guess, since I started the thread.

Frankly, I was disappointed by the execution of the game’s “branching.” GW2 has a relatively linear plot, regardless of advertisement and pick-your-mission interludes. However, that’s not a horrible thing. Portal, Psychonauts, Final Fantasy, and many more games have demonstrated the powerfulness of the linear plot even in gaming. Linear plots can be grande, and branching plots, while fun, take years to construct and are incredibly expensive.

However, I think ArenaNet’s “pseudo-branching” was a poor decision, as the many alternate mini-missions felt disjointed and pointless, and the money spent producing so many of them could have gone elsewhere. The developers should simply have cut down on the unimportant choices and created several more game-changing decisions akin to choosing your order, were they going to branch at all. I feel like branches should leave an actual mark on the plot, and cause one to wonder what would have happened if the other option had been taken. The branches in Guild Wars, outside of race and order, were exactly the opposite.

I also feel like re-occuring characters in personal story missions would have been preferable. I frankly felt a little overwhelmed by how many characters I had to meet, and the majority of them were purposeless and active for only one or two missions, if that. Fewer, more compelling and re-occuring characters like the mentors and racial friends would have been preferable to the vast array of pointless strangers that gobble up screen-time.

I agree on that there is an overwhelming amount of characters. To be honest I can hardly remember any of them. The only memorable characters for me are the members of destiny’s edge, trahearne and your order-mentor.
All these seemingly random people I met along the way… I forgot them. I vaguely recall recruiting some sylvari’s. Their names? Ermh… well. Good question!

So I am a human and choose the commoner storyline. Wonder what happened to that innkeeper and his daughter-what was her name again? Weren’t they the people that raised me..? Why do I never hear from them? Why when I stop by is it that they hardly recognize me?

Besides having less characters, I think they should be better fleshed out. I felt a certain attachment to my order mentors. You get to spend a lot of time with them, they treat you as an equal. They have their weaknesses and their strenghts. Better, they have a personality. (sorry I’m going there) I really liked Tybalt. And I still think it sucks he died. Mostly because they removed pretty much the only character from my story that I had some emotional attachment to.

Characters like Trahearne, you also spend a lot of time with him, yet there is no connection. I think this is because besides being extremely serious, he has no extremes in his personality. He seems to be one of those people who never shows the back of his tongue, which annoys me. ^^’

In a nutshell, things I’d like to see is characters from your past coming back, even if just something without a lot of importance. And more fleshed out characters, to whom you get some sort of attachment.

First of all, I think the focus on “this is MY story” is a poor fit for an MMO story, which has masses of players doing pretty much the same thing, often together.

It would have been better for for the player to become part of some legendary group or military unit, which makes it possible for players to still get all the glory but not have the pitfall of it being about one person.

eg. Steven Erikson’s Malazan series of novels, which is all about some storied military unit called the Bridgeburners who were betrayed and nearly-wiped out, but the remaining members have near legendary status. Unlike a “adventurer party” like Destiny’s Edge which has just a few members, this is a military unit which formerly had hundreds of members, so having the players belong to such a group allows for a proper balance between fame and anonymity.

Secondly, I think a lot of the hate towards Trehearne would be been reduced had he been a non-combatant. Just make him a scholar and strategist who can’t really fight. Give him a couple of memorably eccentric and stupid bodyguards/sidekicks so we’re not forced to defend him all the time. And then give him some moments in the story where his special knowledge saves the day so he has a reason for existing.

So with Trehearne relegated to being the Ideas Man, the player can have the primary role as the Person Who Got Everything Done. (or if you take my earlier idea, the Vital Member Of The Group That Got Everything Done.)

I think these simple structural changes are all that’s needed to alleviate a lot of the complaints about the story.

As for voice acting, hollow characters and so forth, well, you shouldnt expect so much from a video game story, especially an MMO one :P