Guild Wars 2

Okay i’ve just finished my 2nd toon to 100% story/map etc. and I feel it’s time to put at least my PoV into the PS issues.

As a player from GW1 who played it religiously and was drawn into the intricate web of storytelling that makes it one of the best games story and lore wise I personally have ever played, I can’t help but feel disappointed by the shallowness of GW2 initial personal story.

Now don’t take it as me saying I dislike the story, because I don’t, I very much enjoy the story, there is just no depth to any of it. We hop from 2-3 mission storylines skipping alot of stuff in between and each seeming to lack any form of conclusion or continuance.

e.g. Forging the Pact I believe the mission was called, where you find a research team near Concordia. Now this mission has something pretty awesome in it, A tome from when the dragons last rose written by the dwarves. So we go about gathering it, escorting the people out of the caves, kill the boss and then mission conclusion. Then what? We don’t find out about the scroll? We don’t get any lore about it, we don’t even take it back to Durmand priory to ask Ogden about it? It just ends, and we are on the move again, something incredible and BAM break the immersion and depth of the story by skimming past this and preventing you from getting involved in something meaningful.

Another example:

When you work with Sieren for the Priory you track down this incredible Dragon Blood Sword stolen by Sons of Svanir and formerly owned by nasty Dagnar who you kill in GW1. Again like my example above we recover it and thats about it, no depth, no real lore, just skim past and continue. This is a weapon used to combat the elder dragons, or at least formed from the blood of a dragon, I would of thought that meant it was important.

Then of course the biggest immersion breaker to me would have to be with regards to our mentors. By the mists why on earth are you killing everyone the player knows in the game ESPECIALLY the mentors. Killing the mentors and the Npc’s you meet along the way just throws me out of liking the PS, and breaks immersion for me. I understand “the dragons are powerful, blah blah, they kill alot of things” we Know that, we get that, but when the interactions you have with npc’s, MEANINGFUL npc’s is few and far between, I just do not comprehend why they are killed. In GW1 I think we only lost maybe 1 ally in each campaign, Saidra in Prophecies, Kehanni in Nightfall, Togo in Factions and Gadd in EotN. These were all sad passings and they added an emotional element to the game, but the majority of our friends and allies made it to the end of the game, and that companionship is something players like. The Mentors are great companions and I expected them to stay with us throughout the entire game future expansions included, they are our connection to our faction and adds a very human element to the way our story progresses. Losing Tybalt and Losing Sieren was sad and there was no npc replacement to keep the story enjoyable, by killing them you isolate the player and it certainly breaks immersion not to mention feeling like a goremonger after a large chunk of story NPC’s get killed off like cannon fodder.

There is also the problems with your OWN personal story, I thought once we killed Zhaitan we might get some more content back in your racial city about your own personal story, I think I spent a whopping 2-3 hours in div reach on my human toon. I’ve never been back to my personal instance, or have a reason to. These amazing beautiful cities are sitting deserted because there is no non-combat based dynamic events or activities to do there. I always imagined we would have a branching story mode as in for example.

Start Character – Initial PS introduction – Your first choice (Missing Parents – Concludes that section when you find out the truth.

from there you then have a contact from – Shining Blade about your parents (new arc)
– Contact about starting Zhaitan PS

Having the stories branch so you had like a storyline based around our big nasty dragons, but also being able to go back and talk to seperate contacts to continue our OWN personal story, as really we are following Trahearnes PS as a tag-along, would have been a nice addition.

My main characters personal story is about my parents being spys for the shining blade, and them getting killed by the White Mantle, now that is awesome, I love the white mantle, but killing one confessor and then continuing the story as if my toons parents don’t matter, or that my character doesn’t want to help or work for the Shining Blade as well seems bizarre. We are again skimming the surface and not diving a bit deeper into the story, getting involved.

Another aspect that perplexed me, literally I was stumped for a long time was with the Lagos.
Saiya our Lagos npc we meet for a story was the most bizarre encounter i’ve had yet. We don’t get an explanation on who, what, and where the lagos come from, we are just expected to go diving into a temple of Abaddon with this unknown figure. Finding information on the Lagos is bloody difficult, So far all I know if that they are a very “Drow-esque” society from the deep. They seem to be a society divided into Houses, with a priest caste, they don’t have functioning wings like other playes have stated, but more wings attributed to that of a manta-ray with the bright bio-luminescence attributed to deep sea creatures, they have amazing capabilities to hide themselves, perhaps attributed to patterns or light and camouflage like what cuttlefish or octopii have. They could also be former devotees of the fallen god Abaddon, they seem to know of Orr, the temples location and intricacies of the temple, they also share a striking resemblance to the devotees in the temple, with the masks and shrouds used to conceal their identity (as we know Abaddon was the God of Secrets and Water). But I digress, we get thrown into a mission with an unknown entity that is very obscurely referred to. At least in GW1 the dwarves introduce us to the seer by saying an ‘Ancient Creature known as a Seer’ can help you against the Mursaat, we aren’t thrown into the deep end, pardon the pun.

I would welcome a massive overhaul to the PS, with more depth, less meaningless death, and more coherent like in GW1. Again I don’t say this purely as criticism, the story is done well, but it can be made amazing.