Guild Wars 2

Not for the first time, I was doing a set of personal story missions, started becoming attached to a character, and then watched as the story killed him off.

This time, it was Zott, during the push into Orr. Among the mono-toned and generic lines delivered by the majority of the NPCs during these missions, Zott makes a comeback with his new(ish) protoge Ellie, livening up every mission with their amusing, pseudo-abusive banter.

And when Zott insisted that we go find Ellie, I was like “Noooo we can’t leave her to die! Must save Ellie!!” And I was happy we actually got her back.

Then not five minutes later, you kill off Zott.

What. The. Frick.

And not only do you kill off Zott, but Ellie gets over it in like 2 minutes, because the pacing of the story doesn’t allow for actual emotional character development. No, we have to shove things along, because the “epic storyline” is waiting.

Seriously, stop killing off all the good characters. At this point, I’ve come to realize that any time any character is given some semblance of a personality (as in, not coming across as, “All I am is some random soldier in the Pact, and I do my duty, and have no other thoughts or feelings beyond doing my job.”), they’re the next “red shirt” in the storyline. I think if there was a character with a personality that actually lasted more than a handful of missions, I would die from shock.

And if you’re going to kill off somebody pseudo-important, dedicate some time for some actual character growth for those who are still alive. Tired of seeing a named NPC die, then everybody shrugs their shoulders and never mentions them again.

Welcome to how life works in war(especially against a threat that can change the very face of the world *cough*Elder Dragons*cough*).
No matter how hard you try people will die wither you like them or not.

There is no happy endings in war. Only death or the pain that you survived the war while the people close to you died in it.

This is Fantasy world but Anet is not making it into one of those 100% fantasies where 80% of the likable character get to live a happily ever after ending and only few of the likable die so everyone else can live like every other fantasy world.

In War people will always die and mostly it will be the people you like. Did you really expect to go fight Zhiatan and see most of the characters you like live expecting only the characters you don’t like or don’t know about enough to die because you don’t care about them enough?

There are no happy endings in war and that what Anet followed with this part of the story when fighting a Elder Dragon and his army.

If you actually read my original post, in full, you’d understand that I’m not asking Anet to let all the characters live.

I think if there was a character with a personality that actually lasted more than a handful of missions, I would die from shock.

And if you’re going to kill off somebody pseudo-important, dedicate some time for some actual character growth for those who are still alive. Tired of seeing a named NPC die, then everybody shrugs their shoulders and never mentions them again.

Characters that are actually interesting are few and far between in the personal story, as it is. Most of them are bland, faceless, mono-toned “Pact Drones” that have no personality, and nothing interesting to say. The only time (the only time) the story introduces a character with any semblance of personality is if they’re going to be killed off in a half dozen missions.

This is lazy writing.

It has nothing to do with the “horrors of war” or whatever the hell you want to go on about. It’s about the fact that Anet’s writing staff is only putting a kitten effort into characters that they plan to kill off, in an attempt to create emotional impact.

This works the first time. Maybe the second time. But after that, it just means that I’m going to stop giving a flying kitten about any character that they write, because I now know what their red shirts look like.

Greyfeld.7104:

If you actually read my original post, in full, you’d understand that I’m not asking Anet to let all the characters live.

What? Tree-Boy not enough of an interesting, nuanced and deeply developped character for you?… MBUAHAHAHAHAH!!!

I’ve spent most of the PS wishing more of the characters would die.