Guild Wars 2

I just finished playing through the Battle of Fort Trinity, and I noticed something that’s been bugging me, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on before. The scenes that are supposed to make you look like a kitten and a hero play out more like a war reenactment, than an actual war.

So, I was playing through this section of the personal story on my norn ranger, and they’re like, “Fall back and close the doors!!” And I’m like, “Oh crap, we got giants, RUN!!” So, I fall back and close the doors. Cool, no problem.

Then it happens the second time, and this time I notice, I’m the only person running back to seal off the city. Which struck me as odd, but whatever.

Then the third time it happened, I noticed that there were NPC guards standing not 5 feet away from the door controls, staring out into space, while I (second in command of the army) am doing gopher work. “What the hell,” right?

Then I’m told to plant this bomb to blow the door to get the orb back from the risen who stole it, and there’s an NPC sitting right next to the bomb case, and she’s like, “Here’s your bomb!” And I’m like, “You’re already holding the stupid thing, why don’t you set it?” Then the door blows, and I rush in to kill everything, while all the NPCs just stand around and watch. And when I recover the orb, they’re like, “Now, go put the orb back on the pedestal, like a good little girl!”

(Ok, so I’m paraphrasing a bit.)

My point in all this is that every scene is pretty much my character doing everything while all the NPCs stand around with their thumbs up their butts, reading from a script. “It says here that the Commander stole away from the battle to bar the gates, then blew up the barrier and single-handedly stole back the orb in order to sway the tide of battle. So, nobody help her, just sit on the side and watch. We don’t want to ruin the historical integrity of this reenactment!”

The whole thing just feels very staged and wooden. It doesn’t feel like people are actually reacting to a skirmish with the undead minions of Evil, it feels like they’re sort of bumbling around and smacking at each other with wooden swords, while the audience watches the “hero” save the day.

End Scene.