Guild Wars 2

Does anyone else feel characters in the personal story get thrown away too quickly?

It feels like I have no chance to get to know characters because either they die or the story arc ends and they get swept under a carpet never to be seen again. (I’m not counting the home instance here)

Without getting too much into spoilers there are points in the storyline where you’re fighting the undead and I think it would be nice if characters from earlier story arcs would show up and fight alongside you, even if they didn’t have a major role. (Maybe just a sentence or a charm/dignity/ferocious conversation like with Tegwen/Carys while taking back claw island)

Now I haven’t finished the personal storyline quest yet so maybe something like this does happen at some point…..but I’m not so sure.

It feels like a major shame that the characters you meet in your opening sequence (and afterwards) can’t have any role at all (not necessarily just fighting) alongside you in future story arcs. It seems like a wasted opportunity and makes a huge chunk of the personal story feel meaningless. Like you were just messing about until you got to claw island.

Everything else in the game I’m having so much fun with…..but the personal story has left me feeling a bit cold. It’s satisfying in terms of combat and difficulty but when it comes to actual story I’m struggling to care about anything that happens.

Completely agree. The characters met in the opening part of your personal story disappear far too quickly and have no connection to the rest of the story, even when there seems to be logical points for them to return.

For example, I went the human/nobility/vigil route on my first character. There were a few times where Lord Faren could have made some kind of appearance, given that he is your best friend. After the trial, he is just dropped from the story making his appearance feel almost like a pointless filler character. You lose the sense of connection right away to now only him, but the original path you take after Defending Shaemoor. It would be great if in a future update or DLC your personal story is addressed more.

I would love to see them introduce new content at some point that brought you back to your roots and addressed the initial choices you made again. Although really I would like them to address the current personal story in some way.

It’s things like this that honestly makes me feel like I rather we didn’t have choices in the personal story….because it results in a story that feels stitched together like Frankenstein rather than one that’s been carefully crafted and flows perfectly. Characters get cut out abruptly, the transition from one story choice to another is jarring and it all ends up feeling more like a collection of short stories rather than an ongoing adventure.

Now it has started picking up around Claw Island but it feels a bit on the late side.

ArenaNet definitely seems to have an issue with a certain trope.

Death does not equal plot development.

Spoiler alerts below, but when you have three or four NPCs that are introduced and die within a certain time period, it becomes a drinking game. The first one actually means something. I felt kind of bad when you know who bit it defending the gate.

Though why he had to be on the other side of a CLOSED GATE made me wonder how much of his decision was nobility and how much stupidity but still…

But then one died. And then another one. And then the friends I was doing stuff with just decided to make it a drinking game and were surprised that Traheren (or however you spell his name) doesn’t actually bite it at the end.

Worthwhile deaths are good. Hoping that your companion is still alive as you fight to the top of the tower would have been amazing.

Knowing perfectly well she wasn’t…. not so much.

Give us a bit more to attach to a character to make their disappearance seem somewhat worthwhile in future content.

At least I hope that happens.

Yes, it’s a war. Death happens. But it’s also an amazing plot element… when used properly. When used improperly…

“Eh, there goes another one.”

I think this post touches on some valid points and really is a core aspect of story telling. You have to be able to engage and ultimately empathise in some way with the characters you meet (even if they may be evil).

If you are killing/removing characters to bring in new characters with no real connection or development then it turns the experience into something of a gimmick and as people have said you just end up ‘going through the motions’ of you personal story, rather than feeling it.

One thing that really bugs me is that I selected the human option that I never found my sister’s body. Then, once that side of the plot is resolved, it’s straight on to the next branch involving my faction choice. While I quite enjoyed my faction quests, it seemed weird that my character didn’t have any more apparent curiosity about how her sister fared, or what her supposed best pals at the inn were doing either. It felt quite odd and disjointed. I never felt there was any character development with either Petra or Deborah, and that’s hardly surprising when I hardly saw them. Yet they are supposed to matter to my character.

Granted that’s a risk of branching storylines, but maybe one or two side quests, at the very least a trip home at level 40 might have made it feel more natural. So you’d still have those different choices but with a little interweaving. This is a world where waypoints and Asura gates are everywhere, making such travel feasible.

I liked my faction companion better, but I’d agree that a too-speedy death felt cheap and detracted from any further sense of the relationship between characters actually developing.

While the story is a little choppy, I think alot of it has to do with role-play. Projecting your own thoughts onto your character and deciding yourself how they’d react. I prefer the path taken because it doesn’t completely dictate the actions of my character.

I can’t stand Petra. I really hate her character, she’s so cliche as the good looking homely girl next door with the fiery temper. She really ticked me off when the commoner personal story was obssessed with vanity, with all the comments about how good looking Logan is, how ugly Ted (or w/e his name was, the fat bandit dude) and the scarred/burnt face dude (and Logan’s banter when transformed) and Petra’s insult to the goon being about his looks and not the actual things that made him a bad guy. We get it, ugly people are evil and good people look like Disney characters.

On my charr I liked most of the characters to the point where I was disappointed to see them die or not return, but Petra I was mortified to see her during the circus act of my personal story and I desperately hope she is gone for good. If I could swap her for one of the other two I would do it in a heart beat. I remade my elementalist twice after reaching level 20 because I hated personal story choices, one was to be a noble (which I wish I had kept because Lord Farren was awesome, but I couldn’t resolve myself to be a noble… it just didn’t sit well with the image I had for my character despite loving the support character) another time I deleted it because I didn’t like that I had a pre-made sister suddenly forced into my story. She looked nothing like me and she also didn’t fit my characterisation of my character (the story of my human and his ancestry and family is important to me as a former GW1 player, having generic white girl sister made me feel like I was playing someone else’s story), so I started again. I was concerned about this when I first heard about personal story years ago so I’m not surprised it’s killing me with OCD tendencies, I’m not deleting it any more despite wishing I could still change things, I’d pay for the option to reset… hint hint.

On my charr it was largely another story. I chose Dinky and I didn’t regret it one bit, he was a cool character despite being largely uninvolved in story threads aside from ambient dialogue (oh Petra if you could only follow his lead) and he was actually funny (I remember during the beta I had Maverick and didn’t even realise he was there most of the time, but he certainly didn’t bother me). I was actually sad I didn’t see him again after I moved on with the Vigil. Aside from him, my honourless gladium father I almost forgot and no-one else seemed to be around too long. I’ll just throw it out there, I didn’t care too much about Apatia, I had no idea who she was when she turned up and I didn’t care too much about here when… things happened. Forgal was cool and was with me for a while so I am surprised he had less fanfare than Apatia looking back on it, that might have been better swapped around. Still, not as cool as Rurik and he wasn’t with us for very long.

Long story short, some characters I’d like to see again, others I desperately hope don’t return. Some of the most intrusive characters (ones that add too much to my story rather than work around it) I didn’t want to see again (they all happen to be human so maybe it’s simply because that’s the only race I have a strong idea of my history with, everyone else I’m happy for the game to take the lead so I can immerse in the culture of the world). Every character that died or had a similair fate I didn’t care too much about and even some had more fanfare than was deserved. There is deffinitely a sense of too many characters coming and going, it felt like an episodic story rather than a continuing arch with deep continuity. One thing I missed from single player JRPGs was the little discussions you can have with your party at the home tome or party menu (in this case, home instance) as the game progresses – with different responses based on the situation. Even if this game had done a lot of that, I don’t think there were many character for me to talk to in my home instance.

The 10 level divisions of the story felt very disjointed and the characters introduced in each one didn’t seem to matter in 10 more levels. I’ll finish by saying I really liked Trahearne and even though my personal story has stalled at level 74, I do care about what happens to him.

I agree with other posters that there isn’t as much connection to the story as one might hope for. I was really getting to like my faction’s partner… and then he’s killed off. Again later in the story another partner and another death. Gee…every time I partner with someone they end up dying. Both of the characters who end up dying had personality. Then I’m left with Trahearne who never inspired me. I find him to be very bland and boring. If he were to die, I wouldn’t care. Another huge issue … maybe I missed some dialog or information early on…was when an NPC is introduced that as a player I’ve never heard of before. A new race I guess. I immediately tried to search the DB for information but it was sparse. Yet my character seems to know of this NPC and is even “honored” to meet them. It really bothered me that things were just added on without previous development. I tried questioning Trahearne about this particular NPC and he says he can’t share any details.

I think it would be nice if we could replay the missions. I remember in GW1 that there were things I missed the first time around. Once I knew more about Tyria and the characters involved, everything made a lot more sense.

agree with this post is partly what i said in mine

I agree that “disposable NPC syndrome”, whether they die or just disappear, is annoying. It’s much better to introduce a smaller number of recurring NPCs who you have time and opportunity to “bond” with, instead of a constant stream of new faces who vanish just as quickly.