Guild Wars 2

I appreciate everybody coming in to give their 2 cents, but since I didn’t mark the thread as a spoiler thread, can we please keep the spoilers to a minimum (or at least kept inside spoiler tags)? I’ve already had a couple story elements spoiled for me that I didn’t know about, and didn’t want to know about until I got there for myself.

bluejay.6739:

First, I didn’t really expect much from GW2 in terms of voice acting or story line. It was pretty obvious to me that ANet didn’t have the resources to pull this off. And as SWTOR proved, you can have a great storyline and top notch voice acting and still have a crappy game. BUT if we are critiquing the personal story aspects…

SWTOR also proved that you can have believable voice acting in an MMO, even though they went about it the wrong way. Granted, not ALL of it was good, but most of it was better than the “epic speak” that GW2 seems to have fallen in love with.

At the moment it seems very, there is evil and there is good. You’re in the side of god fighting all evil.
Evil always has a motive which is usually to dominate, and more often than that to dominate the realm/land/kingdom/world.

What would make it more interesting and believable is finding out what’s behind that motive. For example in The Winds of Chnage you had the Ministry of Purity, they are evil but their motive is a good one, to cleanse the land of Shiro’s sickness.
I found the Nightmare court interesting in this sense and would have liked to have more interactions with them. In their eyes, their actions are good because they see the tablet as forced upon them, they want to make their own choices, not live by Ventari’s rules, but they are evil because of the way they go about doing things.

Basically we need more of the fuzzy gre area

I have no idea why everyone is so crazy about Tybalt. He actually made me stop playing my human thief. I could not believe that my character had given up a life of luxury in Divinity’s Reach to join a secret, shadowy world order to be ‘mentored’ by a completely worthless character in the secret agent business. I gave up playing at lvl 36 because I just could not get over how terrible he is as a secret agent.

Now Forgal. Oh Forgal, everything about him was done right. The backstory, the gruffness, the slow warming up to your character. The jabs your character shares with him. He helped me buy into the whole motto of the Vigil “some must fight, so that all may be free” He seemed so much more grounded than Tybalt.

Mike Vaughn – Lightbringer Tybalt Leftpaw = award for most kitten character and VA combo for a MMO.
I really wish that the next explansion lets us get a character from the order we joined (permanently, so he sticks with us even if we swap to another), aslo revive the kitten charr plz.
Also Tybalt does become more kitten as time goes on, Grandpa Max, sorry i mean Roy Campbell?, sorry i mean Warmaster Forgal starts cool, but doesnt get any better, its the character development that causes Tybalt to be the most beloved Gw2 char (everyone who went with OoW first will confirm that).

The Anarchist.8234:

I have no idea why everyone is so crazy about Tybalt. He actually made me stop playing my human thief. I could not believe that my character had given up a life of luxury in Divinity’s Reach to join a secret, shadowy world order to be ‘mentored’ by a completely worthless character in the secret agent business. I gave up playing at lvl 36 because I just could not get over how terrible he is as a secret agent.

Now Forgal. Oh Forgal, everything about him was done right. The backstory, the gruffness, the slow warming up to your character. The jabs your character shares with him. He helped me buy into the whole motto of the Vigil “some must fight, so that all may be free” He seemed so much more grounded than Tybalt.

I agree! I disliked Forgal at first, then warmed up to him when I learned more about him. Tybalt is…well, overrated. He’s the ‘zany’ trope at play, hence why he’s so popular.

I just really hope this game doesn’t go down the route of making every other NPC ‘zany’ to accommodate the wishes of the same masses that cried out for such things in WoW. Though I have faith that Arena Net are above such things!

Garenthal.1480:

The Anarchist.8234:

I have no idea why everyone is so crazy about Tybalt. He actually made me stop playing my human thief. I could not believe that my character had given up a life of luxury in Divinity’s Reach to join a secret, shadowy world order to be ‘mentored’ by a completely worthless character in the secret agent business. I gave up playing at lvl 36 because I just could not get over how terrible he is as a secret agent.

Now Forgal. Oh Forgal, everything about him was done right. The backstory, the gruffness, the slow warming up to your character. The jabs your character shares with him. He helped me buy into the whole motto of the Vigil “some must fight, so that all may be free” He seemed so much more grounded than Tybalt.

I agree! I disliked Forgal at first, then warmed up to him when I learned more about him. Tybalt is…well, overrated. He’s the ‘zany’ trope at play, hence why he’s so popular.

I just really hope this game doesn’t go down the route of making every other NPC ‘zany’ to accommodate the wishes of the same masses that cried out for such things in WoW. Though I have faith that Arena Net are above such things!

I did find the human story the worst which is why I chose Asuran to start.
So far I kinda like the asuran story though it does feel out of place when my toon wants to “fight” (necro, not warrior btw) instead of saying something more ironic/sarcastic.
That said the whispers charr sidekick (Tybalt)is the best npc ever, really Anet whoever did that writing/voice, give him more jobs. Zojja doesnt fall behind etiher.

That said, should everyone be Tybalt? no that would be weird. I guess it worked for me because I kinda give my toons some “personality” so when my asura ( so sure of himself but with no training in stealth becuase he is a necro not a thief) learned that Tybalt was trolling him the whole time it was simply funny and I loved it.

Some conversations/characters are quite badly made, yes. There’s Rytlock, a very good voice (Steve Blum never fails) from which voice you can recognize authority and threat, then there’s Trahearne… Some chars can be beared, but mother of god, Trahearne’s acting is horrendous. It really feels like he does not care at all about anything.

The problem is not the delievery, but the content. Characters talk like they’re making a speech and not the actual talking. Another problem is the text tries to hard to deliever its intention in an “in your face” maner. Playing a human this is very painful to deal with, especially in the last leg of the story. It seems to me that the NPCs have to make sure they need to praise the PC on every possible occassion less he/she might forget about it, or they have to chant how great the PC are else they will suffer some divine retribution. Yes, I know the PC is a big hero, but I think it should be delievered in a more contextual way with deeper meaning and not the “you are a hero and I am your biggest fan” manner. Right now most of the dialogue is just … corny.

I played Norn a bit during the Beta and it seems they have the same problem, but just from a different angles. I think the game is trying too hard to deliever its intention, and think that if it doesn’t do so people might not see it which I think is not the case at all. And this is ranging from personal character to cultural background. They should be delievered in moderated dose that let player feel, and see withint the gaming world, not by just dictating to them. For example, we go to a Norn city, we see its people, we see its activity, we see their artchitecture, we look at the kind of quests they have and we think “oh, this is how and what a Norn is”. It’s MUCH better than to have all the NPCs you come across to recite to you “Hey I’m a norn and this is what a Norn is”.

I agree with a lot of the points. What confuses me though is why people are so critical with this game in particular.

The Secret World, another MMO, was god awful for many reasons. But no one mentioned the story, and when they did they actually COMPLIMENTED the atmosphere.

But the dialogue was horrific, it was pop-culture reference after pop-culture reference cheesily jammed down our throats. Some NPC would brief you on a mission then suddenly talk about an X-Box gamerscore, while another homeless guy would talk to you about visions and then prattle on about Pacman and Oprah.

Basically it made this game’s dialogue look like Citizen Kane. But everyone seemed to love it. Weird.

Ampere.7319:

I agree with a lot of the points. What confuses me though is why people are so critical with this game in particular.

The Secret World, another MMO, was god awful for many reasons. But no one mentioned the story, and when they did they actually COMPLIMENTED the atmosphere.

But the dialogue was horrific, it was pop-culture reference after pop-culture reference cheesily jammed down our throats. Some NPC would brief you on a mission then suddenly talk about an X-Box gamerscore, while another homeless guy would talk to you about visions and then prattle on about Pacman and Oprah.

Basically it made this game’s dialogue look like Citizen Kane. But everyone seemed to love it. Weird.

That’s what happens when you discuss a game with people who have horrible taste. Personally, I thought the dialogue for TSW was horrendous. But I also didn’t like the game, so I feel no reason to harp on about it, since I’m not playing it.

However, I AM playing this game, and I would like to see one of the game’s few weak points brought up to par with the rest of the game.

Ampere.7319:

I agree with a lot of the points. What confuses me though is why people are so critical with this game in particular.

The Secret World, another MMO, was god awful for many reasons. But no one mentioned the story, and when they did they actually COMPLIMENTED the atmosphere.

Personally I complain about things that make me enjoy the game less because ANet actually cares about making a good game, and has a genuine interest in improving the playing experience. I’ve been waiting for GW2 since they stopped working on GW1 and I want it to be the best game it can be.

TSW, meawhile, is parent companied by EA. If you can present them with a profit loss graph, then you might get them to listen. :P

I’m also finding the dialogue to be about on par with a dreadful 80’s b-grade fantasy movie. Not all the dialogue, but the vast majority.

Dialogue is stilted and unnatural; no-one uses slang or contractions. The writers have fallen into the trap of trying to place the dialogue into some vaguely neutral fantasy setting, stopping just short of Olde English. The result is a form of dialogue that has never been spoken before and never will.

The has directly lead to two things. Firstly, I have all but forgotten the story up to the part where we presumably slay a dragon or force him from the lands – I don’t know and I don’t care. The storyline is trite and hackneyed. Going on a journey through dangerous lands to slay a dragon was covered in The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings and I feel as the audience we deserve better than a rehash of that.

The second thing is I found myself delaying starting the story quests after level 25 or so. It’s not that it got worse around there, it’s just that my tolerance had bled out and I found myself using cut-scenes as a good chance to take a bio break.

Working from memory, if I were to retell the story now it would go something like this:

I literally did most of this stuff this week, more of it should be memorable.

In summary, the characters are poorly voiced. They are unnatural and stilted and don’t follow usual speech patterns. Never mind how much of the dialogue was exposition. The story arc is tired and dated and over-used, especially the part where a dragon and his undead forces threaten the realm. Characters are all bar one completely forgettable.

I find many of the voices too plain, the dialogue too stiff. There’s a lack of emotion that’s also caused by the animations as well as voice acting.

To use an earlier example, where you tell a certain Asura her husband is dead, she puts on a rather half hearted “Oh noes” sort of voice. The closest thing I can compare it to is my own reaction to accidentally placing a healing rune into my DPS gear. Now I know there’s only so much you can do, but the facial expressions and body language lacks entirely. In most conversations you simply stand there and talk.

Treherne or er… I honestly forget the spelling. The sylvari Orr researcher, he plays a fairly big part in the story. I’m so utterly confused. The most softly spoken man who has never lead warriors suddenly becomes a great leader that everyone accepts and… man. It’s like reading Zeus used to be a librarian until one day where he flicked a switch. That writing was confusing, as are his powers in a certain cave you go in to rescue researchers. I mean, he can do -that-?! I didn’t see that explained and I didn’t think that profession could use greatswords. His voice also lacks any real emotion in my opinion.

Now, the worst of the writing I saw really has to come from the Asura starting zone. If you don’t want spoilers to bits, don’t read on.

One big example is one of the missions where you get to choose what order’s stratagy to use. If you go with the Order of Whispers your mission is to get arrested to get into the jail to break someone out of a jail. Alright. So to get arrested you protest. You actually get a protest sign! Cool! You protest! The guards come to arrest you. You… you have to beat down about 20 of them? 30? Wait, don’t you want to get arrested? Why is there a huge battle. Finally once you get enough down another group that’s unattackable claims you’re under arrest and you let it happen? Wait, I just freaking set my huge undead minions on his pals and stabbed them with my dagger. Now I’m casually arrested? The story gets worse when it’s shown you’re put into the cell with the Whispers Agent you’re with, but you’re both fully armed and armoured still? No explanation. Madness.

Another earlier one is a Durmond Priory choice. Logic, brains, knowledge. They outsmart their opponents, was the basic concept I got from hearing them out so far! Cool! So we go on the mission. We walk straight up to the door but to the mission’s credit we try to talk our way in. We fail. Guess they’re not -that- smart. So we steal golem suits as disguises. Cool! Five minutes later the cover is blown because the Priory person was really daft again and now I’m battling all sorts of people I might as well have just killed at first to have saved time.

Again with the Priory. Your Magister mentor you’re assigned too its nuts and shows no logic whatsoever. “Join us, we are the best choice because our research gives us the advantage. Brains over brawn.” Wait. No. There’s no single part of the whole Durmond Priory quest line where anything remotely intelligent happens. I feel like I should have picked the Vigil and just gone in smashing instead of weakly disguised smashing.

The level 51 personal story quest for Durmond Priory however is quite amazing. It’s entirely ridiculous how the magic manages to work like that from what I understood. But it’s very, very fun.

Another more specifically Asura problem is well… They’re gnomes from World of Warcraft. Forced up from their underground home, really small but really smart, the most technologically advanced race of inventors with sci-fi type of items beyond the setting. If you ever need someone to write something to further that race as a whole, please spice it up a bit. It feels like a bad copy as it is that 99% of MMO players, your customer base, will notice. Fortunately I like Asura when I dislike Gnomes, the lack of squeaky helium voices is one of the main factors in this, as is making them less mini-human and giving them actually interesting non-human bodies. No breasts on females was also a very commendable thing for an MMO to do due to it’s audience, although I fear that is somewhat offset by the revealing battle bikinis other female races have to wear. Back to real story issues next.

…And it seems I’ve hit the maximum post length, so I’ll continue in a second post! —->

Continued from the above post —->

Onto Asura again, the only race I’ve played beyond level 10 so far, they’re filthy little criminals. I broke the law several times, whether tracking down people framing me or simply smashing my way through government property and people. And it’s done so casually. The Snaff Savant attends… illegal gambling fights, participates and wins? All for the greater good? Murders many government security officers on a hunch? And wait. You’re tracking down the people who altered your golem. You check what each of the gambling fighters changed and the councillor, those were the three people. It’s blatantly obvious its the councillor, but you can only choose one of the two fighters even after looking over all three plans as part of the previous quest. Alright. So you do that, blah blah blah. OH! Suddenly you realise it must of been this Council woman all along! And she admits it, it turns out the evidence against her was the blueprint she gave you in the beginning. Duhh! But wait! Whilst you speak to her she’s had her secret ninja army retrieve the blueprints she gave you so you now have no evidence! Dun dun DUN! So you go on to save the day since you know her plans and what she’s done etc. So why did she ever give you the blueprints, just to take them away again, when it obviously lead to her whole plan being ruined? This story follows no logical path. What’s weird is the other Asura Councillors she tried to assasinate take it so casually after 20 giant killer golems almost slaughtered them, and arn’t even going to take action against the evil Councillor woman.

So I’ve broken into government facilities, beat up their secret security, got arrested, blasted my way out of their jail and killed some more of them there, starred in an illegal event where I was announced by my real name (not that I was ever dsgsuised at any other point anyway) and just seen the Council not care about assasination and act so casual and make out it’s common. Yet Asura being filthy criminals is not mentioned or explored otherwise. It feels so accidental and bad, like some sort of grand mistake. And those were just the ones from my low level character creation starting stories and order choosing missions.

I also find myself agreeing with Socks. In the bigger picture, the story doesn’t really add up. Play some Mass Effect, play some Elder Scrolls, watch Firefly, read Lord of the Rings. read the A Song of Ice and Fire series. There’s some good stories. They’re exciting, dynamic and intruiging. Here I’m several people’s puppet with no real story choices with any lasting meaning at all in a rather dull story that lacks character development, moral dilemmas and satisfying progress. Not to mention weak characters and weak story points in general. The giant dragon breaking the world and trying to wipe out all life was also done in Cataclysm, a World of Warcraft expansion. I realise you might be trying to appeal to some MMO players, but that’s really the wrong game (atleast in recent expansions) to take inspiration from. Dragons, undead, yeah. Lack of originality.

All in all, I think I could do a better job at writing and directing the voice acting than your staff. What shocks me is that the actual game is amazing. The combat is so much fun, the locations look sensational and immersive and it’s by far the best MMO I’ve tried that was released within the last five years. But the story lets it down far too much.

Good luck fixing it in future and thanks for listening, I’m (pleasantly) surprised and impressed to see such interest shown. The gameplay and world here is amazing as said, with better story and content it would really, really shine.

Karther.7481:

One big example is one of the missions where you get to choose what order’s stratagy to use. If you go with the Order of Whispers your mission is to get arrested to get into the jail to break someone out of a jail. Alright. So to get arrested you protest. You actually get a protest sign! Cool! You protest! The guards come to arrest you. You… you have to beat down about 20 of them? 30? Wait, don’t you want to get arrested? Why is there a huge battle. Finally once you get enough down another group that’s unattackable claims you’re under arrest and you let it happen? Wait, I just freaking set my huge undead minions on his pals and stabbed them with my dagger. Now I’m casually arrested? The story gets worse when it’s shown you’re put into the cell with the Whispers Agent you’re with, but you’re both fully armed and armoured still? No explanation. Madness.

Another earlier one is a Durmond Priory choice. Logic, brains, knowledge. They outsmart their opponents, was the basic concept I got from hearing them out so far! Cool! So we go on the mission. We walk straight up to the door but to the mission’s credit we try to talk our way in. We fail. Guess they’re not -that- smart. So we steal golem suits as disguises. Cool! Five minutes later the cover is blown because the Priory person was really daft again and now I’m battling all sorts of people I might as well have just killed at first to have saved time.

Again with the Priory. Your Magister mentor you’re assigned too its nuts and shows no logic whatsoever. “Join us, we are the best choice because our research gives us the advantage. Brains over brawn.” Wait. No. There’s no single part of the whole Durmond Priory quest line where anything remotely intelligent happens. I feel like I should have picked the Vigil and just gone in smashing instead of weakly disguised smashing.

This is something that bothered me as well, though this thread wasn’t created to discuss this specific problem. But just to quickly elaborate, I really disliked how every “alternative to violence” ends up in… more violence. There’s no reason we can’t have puzzles, sneaking sections, research portions, and other non-combat story branches. Afterall, that’s sort of what I expected when i joined the Priory: solving problems with research and intelligence. Not half-assed information and miles upon miles of skull-bashing.

Woops, I spot my late night typos in your quote of me. Ah well, you get it…!

Anyway, yes. More puzzles and smart solutions instead of mindlessly stomping enemies, pretty please. There was this one Priory mission where the whole thing was a wind avoidance puzzle. That was brilliant. A shame the Magister NPC with you is able to fly with magic to skip it all. Since when can elementalists fly? It seemed like she was given a random skill that no one else has, certainly not player elementalists, as a very weak piece of story to explain why you’d have to do this alone.

BobbyStein.2315:

Greyfeld.7104:

Garrus.9803:

Actually I disagree. I admit that some of the dialogue isn’t that great but overall I think it’s pretty good. Tybalt Leftpaw (an Order of Whispers character) had some of the best dialogue I’ve seen in an MMO. If you came into this game expecting Mass Effect quality dialogue you’re going to be disappointed. But if you take it for what it is it’s good.

If by “Mass Effect quality dialogue,” you mean “dialogue that’s natural and believable,” then yeah, I did.

Nobody TALKS like this. That’s my point. It’s stilted and extremely campy and sounds like something you would expect from amateur hour at your local community theater.

For the record, it’s not the fault of the voice-actors, it’s the script that’s the problem.

In what content is the writing/VO problematic for you? The ambient world stuff? The personal story? The dungeons? They were all handled differently. The more specific examples you give, the better we can understand your feedback. I realize that this post is in the personal story section, but I want to know if your criticism is limited to that.

Thanks!

I personally thought it was pretty generic video game-quality voiceovers (meaning, generally, not that good), and the actual text wasn’t all that great.

I can’t really give many examples because in the human story (first character I started, but only leveled to 15 – now the character is 28, but I have not progressed the personal story past 15ish), the voice acting was, pretty much always, annoying enough I read the text and then ESC to next frame.

In the Sylvari story (my 2nd character who’s 80, and personal story is past the point where I had to get the PoI in Straits for 100% completion – I had stopped at 53 simply because I found the personal story episodes unfun to playthrough), I find the text/voiceovers marginally more tolerable because bad writing simply sounds better in an English accent to this American.

By bad voice acting what I mean is that when I’m listening to it, the thought that constantly runs through my head is “no one ever actually talks like this in real life”. Not necessarily the words they are saying (bad writing is another common video game problem), but how they are saying it. Bioware generally has good voice acting (FemShep is simply amazing, many of the major NPCs in TOR were well done, and while DA2 wasn’t awesome, I will always think Varric incredibly well voice-acted, as well as Morrigan and Leliana from DA1).

This is not, IMO, a Guild Wars 2 problem, but a video game problem (and an anime problem – I can’t watch “cartoons” simply because all the characters sound like whiny teenagers that yell everything) in general, and probably down to personal taste as much as anything.

The ambient voice acting in the game is generally well-done, though – apart from hearing some of it way too many times thus far. But the cutscene (story mode with 2 characters on the screen) voice acting is something I skip through as soon as I have read the text – unless it’s a Sylvari speaking – because that accent, for me, hides some of the badness of it all.

I just want to say that I love the Leftpaw fellow, but truth to tell, except for his name, I didn’t know he only had one paw… At first I thought his name was Leftpaw because he was clumsy. But then during the Claw’s island story quest he says that since he lost his paw, things have not been the same for him, and I was like “Whaaaat ? He actually misses one ?”

I felt bad because he is a great character, and that lack of background seemed uncalled for. Now that I think about it, when I did the “protection mission” of you-know-who, and he was disguised like that person, he did say “and I have two hands !”, but I thought it was because Charrs have, well, paws, not hands.
But I have to admit that it’s one little details compared to a lot of plot holes/missing dialogue. For instance, during that very same mission on Claw’s island, who the hell is the “package” that Trahearne is holding ? Not a word about it, or maybe I missed something :/

Yeah, I wish my Guardian wouldn’t have to talk in such a deep low-tone voice. It didn’t bother me at first but as I go along with my personal story, the voice makes me want to stop listening to her talk. I still listen because I don’t want to read the story line sometimes. I know that tanks have to act tough and sound tough specially if they’re male, but the deep low-tone voice on a female guardian doesn’t sound pleasant. If there is a way to control voice pitch/tone, that would be cool.

Greyfeld.7104:

EndlessDreamer.6780:

I believe the issue is with the genre of higher fantasy that you have the expectations of epicness.

The Norn are all stoic hunters, the humans all heroic, the Charr all powerful, Asura are all genius inventors, etc.

However by constantly applying this same trope to every set of dialogue, you create a feeling of staleness.

After one hundred Norns all talking about glory in the exact same tone of voice, you lose their individuality. The characters become defined by their races instead of colored by them. Yes, a Norn might have been raised in a society that glorifies hunting and power, but would -all- Norn have the same “For glory! They shall sing my songs in the halls of etc etc” sphiel?

Cause currently, they do.

I think ArenaNet has fallen back in to the old trope that everything has to be epic. No character must show weakness. It must all be amazing. They all rise to the occasion and they are all heroes. They never once falter.

Hell, we even miss the one crowning moment of possible moral ambiguity in the series, the defection of Logan.

It’s far too black and white and far too unbelievable. It works in a limited sense, but unfortunately, it reduces the believability of the character as a multi-faceted individual if all of them share it.

So I think a bit more work needs to be done to flesh out your side characters. We don’t want all of them to be simpering cowards, but it’s not bad to hate a NPC. We don’t have to like them all. It’s more believable if there are some we like and some we find insufferable. It also adds to the story immensely if they are redeemed or not redeemed, versus us going in knowing that they are:

A) Either going to be heroes and succeed
B) Going to be Heroes and die trying.

I’ll be completely honest, I really didn’t buy GW2 for the story telling. I love the game mind you, but the NPCs could use some serious work.

Great post. You said it better than I was able to.

I’d also like to point out that a lack of dialogue options within cutscenes rips players concerned with roleplaying right out of the immersion. There are countless times when I’ve wanted my character to say something in reaction to something an NPC said, and my character says the exact opposite. It just reminds me that it’s not really “my” character, it’s the character that Anet designed for me.

These points are great and I very much agree, the last point even more so! I had points where I thought “Bah, why would I say that?!” hehe.

EndlessDreamer.6780:

The Norn are all stoic hunters, the humans all heroic, the Charr all powerful, Asura are all genius inventors, etc.

However by constantly applying this same trope to every set of dialogue, you create a feeling of staleness.

After one hundred Norns all talking about glory in the exact same tone of voice, you lose their individuality. The characters become defined by their races instead of colored by them. Yes, a Norn might have been raised in a society that glorifies hunting and power, but would -all- Norn have the same “For glory! They shall sing my songs in the halls of etc etc” sphiel?

I realized that when my female norn thief was introduced to the Durmand Priory in Lion’s Arch (german voice acting). It sounded absolutely wrong, and due to the voice acting I can’t imagine a female norn joining any other order than the Vigil.
Just imagine Donkey Kong beeing the host of Dr. Kawaschima’s Brain Training…

I don’t want to say the voice acting is bad, but it feels stereotyped. So when it comes to freedom and character development, computer says no …

I love this game, but I think the personal story isn’t really up to the standard of the rest of the game.

Firstly, I agree with EndlessDreamer’s assessment that characterization seems to be defined by and limited to the “racial ideal” of each race and this tends to make the story a bit bland.

Secondly, I would like to bring up another problem I have experienced…

Specifically, it seems like some of the story presentation doesn’t really mesh well with how the world defines specific cultures. The Asura have no problems with this, their story is exactly how I feel like they are represented in the world. But the Charr though…

The Charr are represented as a harsh, no-nonsense race of warriors that value strength, ferocity, and loyalty to your fellow soldier. Essentially a very serious, intense race, kind of like Klingons basically.

But when I was going through their story (Iron Legion) it just felt a bit…hokey, and not intense or serious at all. Almost like how a cartoon from the 90’s would feel. Just to better explain this, it would be like…

“Okay time to get my weapon prototype…oh no! Flame Legion are in my lab!”
<Play fight music as I fight the Flame Legion>
“Okay now I got my weapon prototype, time to test out how the different legions are using it…let’s roast some ghosts good buddy!”
<Play fight music as I slaughter hundreds of ghosts that were drawn to the weapon by insulting their mommas>

I guess what I’m saying is that the story is presented in a humorous manner, when for the Charr, I don’t think that really works. I never got a sense of how serious or intense the Charr culture is supposed to be. They kinda just seemed like big monsters that like to joke around, insult ghost mommas, and then kill them with cannons while high fiveing each other.

The voice acting for Destiny’s Edge was top-notch. Felicia Day especially did a very good job with Zojja.

Otherwise, I thought the voice acting was pretty horrible.

Yeah one thing I’ve hated so far is the voice acting, my human guardian just doesn’t have me convinced that he is some hero of the Vigil, even when in combat and I use Stand your Ground, one would think that if the tides of battle were not in your favor and you told your friends to stand your ground, you would say it with a voice fit for a commander, you would shout it out. But no, he casually says it.

The dialogue is childish. I never watched any of the cinematics because I know it’s going to be bad. Reminds me kind of D3 where they had this extremely childish way to telling a story and the villain would tell you his whole plot during a fight; DBZ style. Really annoying and only works in anime.

Trahearne.. an important character to the story. Worst voice work of the entire game by a large margin? :/
He sounds so bored.. his entire life is changing as the story is told and it’s like the guy barely notices what is going on, hearing him during battle is comical.

Coming from only playing human females, I’ll throw in where I think the strengths and weaknesses are in the VA and the writing.

Voice Acting

Good: Countess Anise (seemed perfectly voiced for someone of her position); Logan (considering his background, the guilt and worries he carries, his story — all that is conveyed very well by his VA); Quinn (His writing is another story >.>, but I like the VA who did Quinn’s lines); Forgal (I just loved Forgal — he had me cheering during nearly every one of our adventures together! The part where we had to invade the Charr renegade camp and found the sleeping Charr – his lines were SO hilarious!); Human Female Character’s battle/jumping sounds (anyone hear the Sylvari female character’s battle sounds? More like someone’s punching a kitten… the human female’s are very appropriate).

Bad: Faren (I liked the VA’s tone and attitude, but overall thought he way overdid most of his lines — he’s supposed to be a pompous self-described ladies’ man, but kill the melodramatics on every line already — save it for the lines you need to “punch up” with those qualities); Human Female Character’s pet-responses: All of the pet-related calls are just ridiculous: “I choose yoooouu!” “NEXT!” “PET DOWN” “Not my pet!” “We’re not done yet!” Just… no. The whistle is good, the rest is just stupid; General Almorra Soulkeeper (I liked her VA overall, but there were several distinct points around the Claw Island fights where I swear her VA changed and was voiced by a different person, either that or her VA had a serious cold — was very distracting from the scene!); Queen Jennah (I’m not a fan of her character at all, but I thought her VA was very, very bland — she seems way too detached from what’s going on).

Ugly: Trahearne (I know it’s been said, and I realize he’s a scholar, but as someone else put it in another thread – having to play second fiddle to an asparagus, both in personality and appearance – is disheartening… he needs some life pumped into those plant-veins of his, already! I went from Forgal, best sidekick/mentor ever, to…. this…?)

Writing

Good: The overall Vigil initiation dialogue scenes and subsequent missions involving Forgal and General Soulkeeper I thought were very well written; the “lost parents” storyline involving the Shining Blade was written nicely — the leads into, through, and out of that story felt right; the writing for some of the side-races, the unplayable ones, I think is very well done: Skritt, Quaggan, etc., they all feel unique

Bad: Faren’s lines felt very staged and overdone — some were cute and made me chuckle (the one that is something like “if you louts soil my fine apparel, I’m sending you the cleaning bill!”), but I believe he could use a writing and VA re-work overall; Quinn… I want to love Quinn, and I feel like he’s so close to being loveable, but we need some more — when we walk into our home instance and discover that this happened...that people died and are suffering from the well poisoning because we saved his rear end... well, it was bad. We need to know, early on, why our character loves him. What’s their history? Give us a glimpse so we know why we should sympathize with poor, hapless Quinn. The Ringleader in the circus-based personal story I feel is very underdeveloped. We get what Minister Zamon’s issues are about, and the White Mantle, and the other unsavories plotting against the court, but what’s this guy’s deal? Why does he want her to fall?

Ugly: Trahearne… we’re about to follow him into mortal danger… he needs to have some inspiring lines… for example, shortly after the Pact formation, the Orders meet to discuss construction of the new Pact headquarters. Trahearne says something like: “I don’t feel very inspirational.” — and this is more a VA thing of course, but he should sound defeated, worried, almost sighing that out, instead he sounds more like he just said “I really don’t feel like eating meatloaf for dinner again.” I guess my point is, write him and voice him like a wise scholar, tentative, but brilliant, and drop all of the “wannabe warrior” stuff. Having him tailing around after me on our missions, muttering a good portion of his dialogue at my back as he runs after me (I keep stopping in my tracks, “Huh? What’s that Trahearne? Are we talking or kicking some undead tail here?”) just is lame, and honestly pathetic, and he doesn’t help damage at all essentially in combat — why is he along at all? If he’s the wise researcher, I need to respect him on that basis. Not feel like I want to either swat him like a buzzing fly or defibrillate him before he falls into a coma. We learn that his whole Dream and path revolves around what’s transpiring — we need to feel that.

The personal story for me is the same experience as most of you. Full of overdone cliche, unbelievable characters, B-movie dialogue, and completely predictable storyline.

I have seen story, character, dialogue done in a MMO setting that was way more believable and makes you care about the characters. I don’t care about any of the characters in GW2. If they die in the story line, I don’t care. The story doesn’t make me want to care because I never got to know any of the characters enough to want to care.

With an instanced system of the personal story there was so much potential to make the story system more akin to a traditional RPG rather than a MMORPG. Story with depth like the mass effect series, baldur’s gate series, final fantasy series… Heck even Vindictus, Mabinogi, and Dragon Nest have excellent story lines compared to GW2. They have characters that are memorable, distinct, unique, and through the story line, you really start caring about the characters. I played FF7 over 15 years ago, and yet I still remember the characters because they were THAT memorable. When I saw FF7 advent children 13 years after I played the game, I didn’t need a refresher about who the characters were because I still remember them. When these characters face peril, death, tragedy, it makes you want to cry because you’ve become emotionally invested in the characters so much. When something great happens you feel happy too.

To be fair some of the Vigil story line is okay. Just not good or great, but everything else just felt like… did the writers even try? I’ve read GW fan fiction that was way better than this.

As for the voice acting… it’s terrible and cheezy. Player character voice overs during combat is just NO… makes me cringe every time I hear it so I play with the sound off.

I think a lot of my issues with the dialogue and VO have been addressed: lots of it feels like speechifying even when it’s supposed to be conversation. Trahearne is certainly the worst offender, while Charr and Asura minor characters manage to deviate from the wooden (get it? huh? huh?) delivery the most often, even though they’re always far livelier outside of the conversation cutscenes than within them. Tybalt manages decently even within the cutscenes; I agree with a previous poster that he benefits unduly in the eyes of the players by being “zany” in an otherwise absurdly straightforward heroic journey… but hey, it needs it.

In my opinion, it’s a direct consequence of the story itself being “epic” instead of actually personal. Epic + MMORPG = Impersonal. It’s as simple as that. While it’s possible to tell an intensely personal story using major events as a backdrop, it’s not really possible to insert every single player character in an MMO directly into the heart of an epic, world-changing story, have them play an active (and exactly the same) role in making the epic changes and accomplishing the major goals, and yet still expect that story to be personal. The GW2 player characters are not as pure ciphers as, say, The Dragonborn, but they’re still very close to it. Their cipher-like characteristics are both necessitated and reinforced by their role in the personal story.

If I had to sum it up pithily, I’d say this: a character that starts off with a heroic destiny, acts like a hero, keeps acting like a hero, and then eventually becomes a hero, is not really growing or changing. They’re just leveling up. That’s really what it felt like with my Norn during my entire personal story. She never changed or grew as a character. She just leveled up. It was actually sort of sad when she leveled up into the “more epic” parts of the story, because all vestiges of intimacy and personalization seemed completely lost in the process (probably close in time to when the personal story turned into Trahearne’s Impersonal Story.) At least when she was doing small stuff like snagging a helmet from a Son of Savnir, her utterly Norn-ish banter and tone still seemed fresh, and there was still the chance that she might change or grow a bit later.

Although this is sort of a hybrid complaint that spans both the dialogue/VO and the story itself, I have to say that the entire thing felt incredibly rushed. This rushed feeling was partially responsible for my feeling minimal investment with the story. As was mentioned in other posts, all moments of reflection, despair, self-doubt, infighting, etc. etc. were almost literally moments, and were resolved simply by the player’s character killing some more monsters. You kill some monsters and suddenly The Chosen One has a legendary weapon and is leader of the Pact instead of a scholar. You finish another mission and suddenly the self-doubting NPC is confident. You kill some more undead and the bickering turns into reconciliation. Illusions are exposed as such as soon as you’ve been fooled in exactly the right ways to move the story forward. Meanwhile, you know these radical and miraculous transitions occur because you’re told explicitly that it happened, and you know what was responsible for it for the same reason (it was you, killing stuff, and here let us tell you that!)

Very wooden, and very rushed. No intimacy; no breathing room. In a word: impersonal. I think it was a mistake on a deep conceptual level to have everyone’s personal story culminate with the same massive, world-changing achievement. That one decision opened up several cans of worms that I thought GW2 wanted to discard entirely. This entire thread, I think, is grappling with one or two of those worm-cans.

As stated above characters in this game (Destiny’s Edge excluded) are all bland and just more of the same.
What bugs me the most is that your home disctrict is discarded like a pile of garbage after all that talk pre-release on how it’ll change as you progress. At this point I don’t even know if it changed, I never had a reason to go back as all Origin characters were discarded as soon as I hit level 20.
I’m very disappointed with the characters in the story especially after reading all the GW2 related books.

Dungeons are a lot better than the main story line. I can feel the Jeff Grub in them.

Although there are lots of things I love about GW2, I have to say that the personal story almost drove me away. Now, I just don’t do it, and I wish I could turn off the quest notifier for it as well.

My main problem with it is the poor writing. There are tons of plot holes, very little choice in how to proceed, and no sense that my personal story is about me. I played D&D for years and the personal story kind of reminds me of my first efforts as a DM when I was twelve: lots of enthusiasm, but no depth or subtlety.

The voice actors themselves sound fine, but the lines they have to deliver just kind of make me cringe. One slight exception is the carnival stuff in the human story, some of that is kind of fun.

The other big problem is that the personal story isn’t about me! It’s about these Destiny’s Edge people. Based on the name I assumed they were a boy band, but I guess they are Tyria’s Justice League or something, and my whole purpose in life is to get them to act like grown ups. Seriously, if your entire planet is in danger of being destroyed by ravening hordes of undead I think you might be able to work with someone to stop it, even if you hate their guts. Stalin and FDR were able to work together, and they were just fighting WW2!

To be fair, the only game I’ve ever seen that had decent writing was Morrowind, and I think that was because most of it wasn’t spoken, but actually in books you found. I really don’t mean to be harsh, I know how hard it is to do this stuff. Still, after five and a half years plus I don’t know how many millions of dollars I guess I expected something a little more polished and nuanced.

-Matt

Starscream.6498:

Some conversations/characters are quite badly made, yes. There’s Rytlock, a very good voice (Steve Blum never fails) from which voice you can recognize authority and threat, then there’s Trahearne… Some chars can be beared, but mother of god, Trahearne’s acting is horrendous. It really feels like he does not care at all about anything.

Agree. To me the start of my personal story was awesome so much fun. I was sucked in. Then the higher in level I got the worse the acting got. I see a lot of Trahearne now, and he just isn’t believable as a shot caller.

Have to agree with this. The voice actors did the best they could with the material given, and I don’t fault them for their performances.

I do fault the dialogue for being on the level of B movies, however.

I just recently got into the part of the story with Trahearne, and while I wouldn’t say his voice acting is any more horrendous than a number of other NPCs, he does sound more like a bored narrator than an actual character within the story.

I think most of the people complaining about the norn never played GW1, they are that cheesy.

Their entire society is based off of who is the most awesome, and who can kill bigger creatures better.

veritech.1048:

I think most of the people complaining about the norn never played GW1, they are that cheesy.

Their entire society is based off of who is the most awesome, and who can kill bigger creatures better.

That doesn’t give the writers license to completely ignore individuality. There’s plenty of room for racial identity and personal identity within the same character.

I’m not sure how much more individual the norn can get, there’s even a norn author inside the hall of raven.

Perhaps you’re basing the entire opinion of the norn around 3 characters, and not the whole story. Their NPC banter is actually well done.

veritech.1048:

I’m not sure how much more individual the norn can get, there’s even a norn author inside the hall of raven.

Perhaps you’re basing the entire opinion of the norn around 3 characters, and not the whole story. Their NPC banter is actually well done.

This thread has nothing to do with the NPC banter. It’s the cutscene-driven personal story that we’re having problems with. I’m not sure how you could miss that after 80+ posts.

And it’s not a matter of “oh my god, the norn all act the same way!!” It’s the fact that every single character from every single storyline acts the exact same way, and we, as players, have no say in our own characters’ reactions. This just happens to stick out more sorely in some racial storylines than others.

Greyfeld.7104:

But I kinda feel like I’m the only person that feels this way. Am I?

Yes you are.

One of the things I just realized that’s bugged me: the game takes a lot of time telling me about things that have happened, and the amazing things people have done, and how awesome person X, Y or Z is… but it does very little actual showing.

Going back to the human storylines, I hear some tidbits about being friends with these people I grew up with, but there’s no background, story or cutscene to drill the point home. I don’t get to see why we’re friends, or what we’ve been through, or the scrapes we’ve gotten out of together. I’m just told, “Oh, by the way, this person is your friend, so you should care about what happens to him/her.” And when they do something stupid or get in trouble five minutes later, there’s just no reason for me to care.

This holds true in the Asura storyline as well. We’re immediately thrown into this story about applying for the Snaff Prize with a machine we helped build, and after a short demonstration, we’re given the title of Snaff Prize Savant. But we have no input on the machine itself, we know next to nothing about this contest, and the title means exactly zilch to me since I don’t have any context for its importance. Not only that, but there’s no way to lost the contest, so there’s no real drive to win. It’s just like, “Ok, that happened,” and it’s never brought up again.

If you’re going to tell me that something happened, don’t. SHOW me. Exposition and narration don’t go nearly as far as actually seeing it with my own two eyes. If it’s important enough to the story, don’t have some random NPC just tell me it happened. Show it to me in motion, show me the aftermath, give me some sort of weird, psychedelic interpretation of pain and suffering, do something.

Greyfeld.7104:

veritech.1048:

I’m not sure how much more individual the norn can get, there’s even a norn author inside the hall of raven.

Perhaps you’re basing the entire opinion of the norn around 3 characters, and not the whole story. Their NPC banter is actually well done.

This thread has nothing to do with the NPC banter. It’s the cutscene-driven personal story that we’re having problems with. I’m not sure how you could miss that after 80+ posts.

And it’s not a matter of “oh my god, the norn all act the same way!!” It’s the fact that every single character from every single storyline acts the exact same way, and we, as players, have no say in our own characters’ reactions. This just happens to stick out more sorely in some racial storylines than others.

Then to answer you in a more simple fashion, since you feel the need to ignore the underlying parts of a story: yes, all norn act that way.

The story was a neat edition, they weren’t trying to make the next Baldurs Gate.

veritech.1048:

Greyfeld.7104:

veritech.1048:

I’m not sure how much more individual the norn can get, there’s even a norn author inside the hall of raven.

Perhaps you’re basing the entire opinion of the norn around 3 characters, and not the whole story. Their NPC banter is actually well done.

This thread has nothing to do with the NPC banter. It’s the cutscene-driven personal story that we’re having problems with. I’m not sure how you could miss that after 80+ posts.

And it’s not a matter of “oh my god, the norn all act the same way!!” It’s the fact that every single character from every single storyline acts the exact same way, and we, as players, have no say in our own characters’ reactions. This just happens to stick out more sorely in some racial storylines than others.

Then to answer you in a more simple fashion, since you feel the need to ignore the underlying parts of a story: yes, all norn act that way.

The story was a neat edition, they weren’t trying to make the next Baldurs Gate.

If you feel that way, that’s fine. However, this thread is for those who feel the need to speak up, because they feel something is wrong. Please don’t clutter the thread by wasting your and our time trying to tell us that our feelings are invalid.

So, you are thrown into a set storyline? Knowing full well that given the number of players in this game compared to the number of available story combinations…that it will be as cookie cutter as possible. Because it has to to be…realistically.

Anet was probably counting on you to fill in the holes. Its not their fault you seem to lack imagination.

Its a video game geared to serve as many people as possible. What seems neutral and unimaginative to you may seem heroic to some other percentage of the other estimated 1,999,999 people that purchased the game.

But we all have to make the best of the personal storyline. Because there is no way for Anet to customize the dialogue to fit “everyones” expectations.

Hey BobbyStein. I’m no literature critic, but I have this to say:
After playing GW1 I had no intention of coming to GW2 and play it for the story (it was laughable in GW1). I did however find it quite good at times, and to my surprise I’m currently in a hurry to level up and continue my personal storyline

Some storylines, anyway. The others are so dreadful I ended up deleting my characters because of it. Examples of horrible writing (the voice actors actually do a great job, so I’m not complaining about that):
-Human personal story. The player character and Logan are pretty much the most boring characters in the game. Logan has no redeeming qualities. You have no idea how much I wanted him to get ripped to shreds. In Arah, all I could think was “PLEAAASE don’t bring him back”. He is pathetic and his fight with Rytlock during the Destiny’s Edge meeting in Lion’s Arch made him look like an idiot. His love for the Queen is over played and pitty inspiring. “Relax, slave.”
-Sylvari personal story. At first I have selected green knight, but all the sword crossing put me off instantly. This kitten belongs in someone’s private life, not in video games. Love is a major theme in the sylvari storyline, but the truth is – it’s just boring and overplayed. Even for a fantasy game. Then I selected another story line and I still had to live with Caithe, and the player character, which was oblivious and naive. Although I get that, being sylvari, it’s annoying to play a man child, especially when you can see treason a mile away yourself. The worst was clearly Traherne. He is nothing special (other than being a firstborn, yay), and for some reason ends up in charge of the most important organization in the fight against dragons. That totally should not be the player character. They do not deserve that. Even though we’re adventurers and too busy to lead, we could have been offered the position and we would have passed it along to Trahewhatshisface. If we were drunk.

Personal storylines that I have enjoyed a lot:
-Charr Blood Legion: Military lifestyle I have enjoyed it. Every Charr is practical. Most of them are actually efficient at what they do. Being a moron is highly discouraged in the Legions. I won’t go into specifics, but there wasn’t a single moment where my characterkitten me off.
Charr Iron Legion: Almost same as the above, maybe some biological warfare involved. Very enjoyable both as story and as gameplay (dem cannons, awesome!)
Rytlock Brimstone is pretty much the best character in the game. With the best lines and the best voice acting (not that it matters here).

-Asura, Statistics: Characters are efficient but they remain wacky and fun. Congrats to whoever made this story It was a pleasure to play it. The other Asura colleges are ‘meh’, and Zojja is quite annoying by default, but the Destiny’s Edge meeting in Lion’s Arch was really weird. She basically shuts up for most of the cutscene, then all of a sudden snaps at Eir. She’s thickheaded and I guess that’s part of her character, but I can’t see how someone so smart can have such idiotic personality traits.

-Norn was alright, but the Strength storyline deserves special notice. Reminded me of Charr
Their ‘past’ event storylines were good, I can’t choose which was better between Blacked Out and Lost an Heirloom. Fantastic stuff

The Charr and Asura have by far the best dialogues in the game. The Charr have a less corny dialogue, while the Asura are very cynical and the technobabble corny-ness actually fits them as a sort of a comic relief race.

However the Sylvari, Norn and Human made me actually skip the conversation. It was like listening to an 80s cartoon action figure commercial.

While the cutscenes look fine in theory, they aren’t really good in practice. They take you completely out of the world and put you into this artificial sentence – retort play with very limited emotions in the dialogue.
I personally preffered the text bubbles and in-world character speeches. The worst parts are when something is about to happen. Then the game pauses, goes into cutscene mode, and you have 2 characters staring blankly at each other saying some variant of “Oh no.”, and then pushes you back in the game…

If you want to make an instanced, scripted event, then atleast take the courtesy to do it GW1 style, with the surroundings, characters actually being and moving in the world, and such.
Because what we have now feels like the JRPG-style 2 paper cutouts and “Press A to continue” when the text bar fills up.

BobbyStein.2315:

Raf.1078:

Its a video game geared to serve as many people as possible. What seems neutral and unimaginative to you may seem heroic to some other percentage of the other estimated 1,999,999 people that purchased the game.

But we all have to make the best of the personal storyline. Because there is no way for Anet to customize the dialogue to fit “everyones” expectations.

It’s true we built a game that we hope appeals to a wide audience, but it does help to understand the tastes of our more vocal players. There’s always room for improvement with what we do, so we’ll be taking this and other feedback into consideration as we continue to evolve GW2 over the years.

I think in an attempt to appeal to young teens, you’ve made it harder for older people to enjoy the dialogue (although voice acting and unnatural dialogue are equally problematic issues). I’ve said somewhere in this thread already, that a good children’s story can be enjoyed by adults. Hey, even the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings is excellent at appealing to all ages: any 12-years old teen can love their charm, magic, clear and appealing character archetypes, etc; but characters talk naturally, and are filled with subtle details that tells more about them than what they’re willing to tell, including a lot of grey morality (beneath the white vs black surface, LoTR is filled with more complex issues).

For GW2, the archetypes are clear, the main plot points are clear, there’s overall a clear attempt at appealing to a wide audience. But then I see characters arguing like little kids, characters that have little to offer outside of their archetypes/ templates, characters telling the most obvious things to make sure the player can understand it (“We are the Priory. We love knowledge. Don’t listem to them because knowledge is important. Now we’re going to do this, because of knowledge. Also, go get that: it gives us knowledge. Oh, adventures! isn’t it soooo exciting? Let’s make sooo exciting adventures! For knowledge.”), or there’s too much focus on buffing the player’s ego (“Wow, you are a hero! Now, do this. Well done, hero, you really are a hero, doing so much heroic stuff!”). This cheapens everything a bit.

I know it’s appealing to inflate the player’s ego a bit, I understand what was your purpose. But if expressions like “you’re a hero!” were only left for the strongest of the moments, any that would require self-sacrifice, a nearly-impossible task, etc; moments that would involve human lives and a deal of desperation; and especially if those moments were built up through the story, and not suddenly available every 5 levels; those expressions would have a bigger impact on the player (because they were more meaningful, and less overused), and I doubt they would appeal any less to the 12-years old audience. The moment I felt the story was closer to this, was on the assault at claw island, but then, when everything is over… Trahearne gets all the credits. That was the best moment to call the player a hero, and it was really unsatisfying.

But regardless of this last part, what I’m trying to say is, those expressions by themselves excite the 12-years old teens, but how and when they are used will determine how the odler audience will react to it.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Hey, even the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings is excellent at appealing to all ages: any 12-years old teen can love their charm, magic, clear and appealing character archetypes, etc; but characters talk naturally, and are filled with subtle details that tells more about them than what they’re willing to tell, including a lot of grey morality (beneath the white vs black surface, LoTR is filled with more complex issues).

Also, Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Today, having completed the “Choose Your Order” strand of the human storyline, I went to Lion’s Arch to witness the thwarted reunion of Destiny’s Edge. Before the main event, though, I got to see a bunch of local kids ‘roleplay’ their way through the group’s acrimonious split. It was funny, it had great flow, and it was oddly touching. Nevertheless, all the way through it, I had one thought:

“This is so much better than the crappy cut-scenes”.

As if to underpin that point, the meeting of Eir and the rest was a perfect example of why the current two-people-to-a-screen method is not fit for purpose. Put more than three characters into the setting and the whole thing falls apart, as they’re swapped in and out at a rapid pace. It’s honestly like a segment of a Scooby-Doo cartoon, as the villain chases Scooby and Shaggy down a corridor of doors. You know the sort. In, out, in, out, in, out.

This system just doesn’t work. Even two-person exchanges are compromised, as characters stand on either side of the screen to stand and talk to each other. They can’t sit, they can’t stroll, they can’t even touch. Consider that: in the entire personal story – the story of Tyria under threat – no one hugs anyone else. There are no hugs, no slaps on the shoulder, no nothing.

This totally handicaps the game’s ability to provide emotional scenes. When my human warrior was reunited with a long lost relative, there was no outburst of love – just a quick “Ah, isn’t this great?!” and then that was that. To me, the story just goes through the motions like a chore. A dead friend here, a traitorous soldier there, but none of it actually feels like it matters.

What galls me about this is that, out in the world, the writing is of a really high standard. Event-related dialogue is top-notch, and feels like it’s saying new things. There’s wit, there’s charm, there’s charisma. But inside personal stories, the game rushes along, terrified of overstaying its welcome, creating meaningless scenarios which could never exist, even in a fantasy setting. It disappoints me terribly, and my guess is that things could substantially improve if the cut-scenes are dropped in favour of keeping just about everything in-game. It works.

By the way, none of this applies to the dungeon intros, which are excellent.