Guild Wars 2

Just to get it off my chest, my male Norn’s plotline and dialogue were so awful I just can’t bring myself to keep going with the story. I assumed both were written for teenagers, possibly by teenagers (or interns?). IIRC there were also many occasions where the dialogue options provided were immediately contradicted or did contradict something my character had just said.

One other thing I found really distasteful about my Norn’s story: Apparently my character is an antisocial, binge-drinking moron, and I don’t get any choice about this.

It’s not heroic, it’s not interesting, it’s not even funny.

I may have found this amusing when I was 10 or 12, but I’m three times that age now. In fact, at this point in my life I know a few people who’ve been killed or injured by drunk drivers, I know of people who’ve killed themselves while driving drunk, I know at least two who’ve slowly destroyed their lives with excessive drinking, I know of someone who drowned while intoxicated and I even know a few dickheads who still think it is hilarious to steal or destroy things when they’re wasted.

Don’t get me wrong, I still drink regularly, but this rubbish just isn’t funny or interesting, and probably shouldn’t be referred to as “epic”.

There were other issues with the male Norn storyline but I’ve seen these mentioned many times for most of the storylines so I won’t go into them here.

TL;DR: Everything about my Norn’s storyline (except perhaps the voice actor) should be scrapped. It’s dull, nonsensical and in one part quite inappropriate.

The Norns – as far as I understand – have Nordic influences. Think: Vikings. If you read some of viking sagas, you’ll find that their idea of ‘hero’ was different from ours. We e.g. don’t put emphasis on individual bravery – in most modern armies soldier who charged enemy lines with laugher is more prone to punishment for disobeying orders than respect of his natives,

And I’m not saying that every single Viking regularly got drunk enough to kill other men in brawl – I’m just saying that PC, as the ‘hero’ of his people, is expected to be exemplar of some kind. And the Norn’s idea of hero is not connected with ‘ideal, normal member of community’. In fact, I believe that the drunkard act could be met with some applaud, as your character showed he have some guts (as much as antisocial this act could be).

That said, I believe Norn story is too much vanilla. Not enough bloodshed, pompous speeches about heroism, etc. – not exactly my kind of story.

TL;DR: I think that there’s nothing wrong with aforementioned act – you just don’t like the core beliefs of Norn.

The disjointed plot of the male Norn story aside, the dialogue is simply so bad that it is ridiculous. As I stated in a different thread, if you submitted that dialogue as a script to any high school creative writing teacher you’d be lucky not to get an F on it. It’s cheesy and mindlessly blustery beyond reason, and if you heard characters talk like that in any play or movie you’d walk out on it. Which is pretty much exactly what I’ve done. I hit level 80 weeks ago, but I stopped chasing my story line at level 59 and simply cannot stomach the idea of listening to that garbage anymore. Saturday afternoon cartoons for kids put the Norn dialogue to shame.

In stark contrast, though, the great majority of the voiced NPC dialogue you come across in the open world is clever and very well done, and much of it is hilarious. You’d never … ever … imagine that the story lines and the open world voices were written by the same company.

I was under the impression this particular plot was available to BOTH male and female? The lines for the male are likely different, but it’s less a male norn story issue, and a norn story choice issue.

To be fair, your origin story DID say that you “blacked out at a recent Moot”, and the picture shows a half-vomitting male Norn on it. Why on earth did you pick that as your origin story when it’s strongly hinted that you did something very, very dumb while drunk?

It is both genders, by the way. I think that the race choice wasn’t ideal for you, under the circumstances. And as the previous poster mentioned, you were given some forewarning, if only by implication. I thought it was pretty obvious at the CC that you blacked out not because of some illness but because you’d been boozing too much. Personally I found it quite amusing compared with the other sections, a moment of levity in a very boring story.

The Norn’s attitude is rather ‘live fast, die young’ in some ways. Not just because they drink huge amounts of ale but because they hunt not just to eat or save their homestead but to show off the biggest trophies to boast about, and in doing so put their lives at risk. It’s a risk taking culture.

That said, I think there could be more to that culture, and the shamanistic aspects are barely touched upon in the story so we don’t get a lot more from them than boozy braggarts. The lines are often terribly corny and on the whole it seems like they didn’t round out the idea of the Norn fully, which is odd when they already existed as a race.

Zaxares.5419:

To be fair, your origin story DID say that you “blacked out at a recent Moot”, and the picture shows a half-vomitting male Norn on it. Why on earth did you pick that as your origin story when it’s strongly hinted that you did something very, very dumb while drunk?

This.

That entire story depends on your own backstory choice during character creation. The story itself is a surprise, but the overall tone of alcohol abuse is sufficiently clearly implied.
If you feel this is a theme that does not fit how you imagine your character, you have only yourself to blame, because then you should have picked either the lost heirloom or the lifelong rival backgrounds.

I did the very same storyline on my female mesmer and I loved it. The story doesnt need to be epic all the time. I welcome the fact that it can be silly sometimes and serious at other times. I dont mind the norn males voice either (got a guardian norn male), but the voice of the human male makes me want to shoot myself.

I originally hated this option of the story, but I kept doing it.
About 60 levels past and I forgot about the gear warband. I was in Orr. Through the story I did so much. Then it happened. I chose to send the tanks in Orr.
I complete the quest line for the tanks and started to cry a little ( never happens).
For when I saw the commander of the tank line, I felt old. The leader of the tank line was named Ballista Geargrind, the charr from whom I had taken that chugger.

Well first of all I’d like to say I don’t share the your (the author) view at all, nor some of the replies, maybe because it was my first character. I actually liked the story a lot, quite humorous at times and the warband was fun, quests related to it as well. Nothing is perfect, but my overall impression of the story would be a solid 7/10. I can’t exactly recall the dialogue, maybe when I play it now after doing a lot of other stories and races I might agree with the dialogue itself, however I do strongly agree with others here: it’s pretty clear at the beginning that you do something stupid because of booze, so I feel your ‘rant’ is out of place. Norn have a very ‘viking’ like culture which involves drinking, eating, partying, hunting etc. so you might wanna choose something else.

I’m not sure why you picked the “got drunk and blacked out” backstory over the other two options.

Lol what are you talking about? The story and dialogue in the “Blacked Out” story arc are fantastic. I actually laughed out loud at some of the lines in the cutscenes for that arc. I remember something like a Lionguard saying,

“I remember you two driving off in that tank yelling something about how you were going to beat some tree to a pulp.”

and then your Charr drinking buddy goes,

“I remember that! I hate that tree!”

I personally found that little bit hilarious and the whole arc was a pleasure to play through. The rest of the Norn story is boring compared to something like fighting in the arena as a Charr, but the “Dude Where’s My Car?”-esque story bit was well worth making a Norn.