Guild Wars 2

The voice acting for Deputy Mira was probably the worst I’ve heard in the entire game. I don’t think it’s the script’s fault or even that it’s difficult to convey emotion only through voice – it was bad on a whole different level.

She sounds so emotionless and completely breaks the illusion of acting. Just listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=7-xxpulMVis&t=1158

Secondly, I’ve only done Order of Whispers’s and Durmand Priory’s “Battle for Claw Island”, but the part where Tybalt/Sieran decide to sacrifice themselves seems awfully contrived. I get that the different plot lines needed to converge, but just killing them off like that was too abrupt and disappointing.

First of all, the player has to spend some time fighting the risen there and it becomes obvious that there are too many for one person fighting even in just one cluster of the many in the courtyard. So this means that one person choosing to try to hold back ALL of the risen in the courtyard seems very futile – you’d only hold them back for a few seconds before they overwhelm you, thus making the sacrifice for naught.

Secondly, why not send Deputy Mira to die then? She previously states that it’s every Lionguard’s duty to die protecting their city if that’s what it takes. Well, that’s what it takes. She’s already crippled and slowing everyone down. Plus, like I mentioned, her voice acting is atrocious!

I liked Tybalt and Sieran much more.

Lastly, I must concede that voice acting is no easy occupation and takes much skill and talent. That being said, Mira’s dialogue should never have been allowed to make it to the final cut. It’s not so bad that only someone with experience can notice it….it’s very overt.

I think the whole conversation method Anet chose to go with was off here. Putting the characters of the dialogues in front of boring 2D backgrounds with little to no emotion-expressing body language is a particularly bad idea for supposedly highly stressed scenes like a battle or a tearful goodbye or whatever. When you have no well-paced animation, writing that doesnt feel forced, and no sense of the background events (like said battle), all you have left is what you hear. And Mira didnt provide a good enough performance to take our attention away from these other failings.

lakdav.3694:

I think the whole conversation method Anet chose to go with was off here. Putting the characters of the dialogues in front of boring 2D backgrounds with little to no emotion-expressing body language is a particularly bad idea for supposedly highly stressed scenes like a battle or a tearful goodbye or whatever. When you have no well-paced animation, writing that doesnt feel forced, and no sense of the background events (like said battle), all you have left is what you hear. And Mira didnt provide a good enough performance to take our attention away from these other failings.

Well said. I like the direction they went with cutscenes with Dragonbash onwards. I think the development/animation team would really benefit from developing a tool like Source Filmmaker. It would not only result in better cutscenes with less development time (and thus, a more engaged player body), but also allow players to make movies as well. This would really increase the awareness of Guild Wars 2 and put more money in NCSoft’s pocket.

I realize that they’ve already got a lot on their plate, but I hope someone sees this and is willing to discuss it.