AKA How I Learned to Hate my Character.
SPOILERS
I had a bit of an amusing thought while I was going through this very epic personal story arc. I went out onto this beach that was being overwhelmed by a swarm of undead in order to rescue a Lion’s Guard officer and escort her back to the fortress. Of course the only two ways to her are blocked with undead who have unlimited resources spawning on those chokepoints and Magister Sieran, my quirky, eccentric, walking house plant of a chum, is zerg rushed into oblivion and has to be left behind. The thought “Huh, I wonder if she’s supposed to stay dead.” ran through my mind, but I brushed it off. Surely there’d be a cinematic for that. -_-
The ending of this truly awesome quest arc is a cinematic of my character and Sieran having it out about how we’re totally screwed. In one ridiculous, fell non sequitur she comes to the conclusion that she has to stay behind, because every single soldier has conveniently been wonded, while the rest of us make our way to the dock. She says it like it’s the only logical option, though there’s no A+B=C involved. It’s just C!! C!!! WOOO LETS GO WITH C, FORGET REASON AND SANITY, I CHOOSE C! It’s complete crap! All that happens is she gets a giant, thick, made to withstand a siege, door shut with her purposely on the wrong side of it… As if 2 feet of iron hard, 20 foot tall, steel reinforced door is going to succumb to some undead with swords!
That’s not the sad bit though. Instead of being given the option to at least try and reason with her, think of an alternative plan or anything, it just shows my character walking away in slow mow, rolling his shoulders and cracking his neck like he’s some action hero walking way from an explosions. What kind of colossal sociopath is this bugger? Who lets their close friend and partner just throw themselves at an army of zombies, dooming herself to become a zombie in turn and a powerful undead mage of a godlike evil dragon. There was even a Firstborn, an important / powerful hero of the Sylvari, just chilling there. No option to throw him to the wolves or to leave a contigent of Lion’s guardsmen to act as distraction (both of us have the ability to heal after all), though they’d pledged themselves to defend that island to the death, nor does she look at that giant big bugger off door and use her plant powers or her earth magic to reinforce it further. Standing in front of it and casting other spells at it, that’s the most satisfactory plan! Letting those soldiers die in our place could have opened up an excellent story arch with Sieran, blaming you for putting a dozen good soldiers to their death just to save our lives! A bit of tragedy resulting from a hard decision and you’ve got a far more satisfying outcome than “Hey, I’m going to sacrifice myself so you lot can escape” “OK”. There wasn’t even an attempt at a good bye, a thank you or a HELL NO followed by acquiescence to the inevitable.
If we could, maybe, get a bit more choice for our character’s reactions, rather than letting convenient story paths mold them for us, then this already great game would be amazing! Especially if it’s in regards to how we interact with the NPCs foisted on us. Getting to antagonize a companion NPC we really dislike would be fun and emotionally valuable
In short: My character’s now the ultimate sociopathic D-bag goober mongoloid kittenwad when he used to be a developing scholar, hero and legend. Bloody marvelous way to hurriedly write off a major character in my story line while tainting my Guardian.
“How’d that happen?”
“He doesn’t talk about it.” – Stephen Fry
