Guild Wars 2

First of all, I’d like to say that having a non-silent protagonist is a nice change of pace from the usual RPG conventions. It does, however, come with some problems for those of us who care about role-playing elements and who like to build characters with their own outlooks and lore. The majority of players could care less about this sort of thing, but I still feel it’s worth discussion.

As a Charr, when I go through the personal story I feel like I’m being driven along a set of rails as to how my character develops. No matter what choices I make, my Charr is always exactly like every other Charr. The racial archetype is driven a little too thickly into the dialogue, making me feel like my character’s personality and beliefs are set in stone.

It would have been nice to have a bit more varation to story influenced by choices. Let certain races become more influenced by other races beliefs or customs as the story progresses. I’d have liked it if my Charr had been able to gain some respect for the Flame Legion’s original intentions due to having a Flame Shaman father, and gone on to respect human ideals as a result.

I also don’t feel like charm/nobility/brutality has any reall effect on the dialogue. I have two charr, one being charming and the other noble, and I haven’t noticed a change of flavor.

I understand that the story is set in stone, but perhaps in future content we could be given some quests that allow our characters to develop beyond their racial boundaries a little. Similar to the racial sympathy quests that occur around lv 40 or so. This wouldn’t be so much of a problem if the protagonists were silent, but as it is, it’s a bit invasive for the roleplayers.

I find racial interactions fascinating, and enjoy exploring ‘what if’ scenarios involving racial sympathy and character building that heads in contrary directions. I’m sure there must be others who feel the same way.

I’m having the exact same issue with the human personal story. My character is forced to agree with and fawn over Jennah at every turn, despite a lot of the lore surrounding political intrigue. Why can my character not sympathise with Minister Caudecus? He’s of Ascalonian heritage too, so being able to doubt (but not oppose) the peace treaty instead of claiming it to be the best thing ever would be brilliant.

A lot of racial depth is ignored in favour of forcing our characters down the path of tolerance and acceptance.

That’s not the Charr story that’s every story. Problem with voiced content, there are limitations to how much customization can be done, and self inserting is pretty much impossible.

Charr PCs start acting nothing like charr after they join one of the orders, so for better or worse this is already in there.